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THE VOYAGE 

AND 

OTHER ENGLISH ESSAYS FROM 
THE SKETCH BOOK 



BY 
WASHINGTON 



IRVING 



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W$t ftitoersfoe ^Literature &>nit 



. THE VOYAGE 

AND OTHER ENGLISH ESSAYS FROM 
THE SKETCH BOOK 



BY 



WASHINGTON IRVING 




^C 



HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

Boston: 4 Park Street; New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street 

€&e lfttoer?it>e $»?& Camfcri&oe 






CONTENTS, v 






The Author's Account of Himself 1 

The Voyage 5 

Rural Life in England 13 

The Country Church 22 

The Angler 29 

The Stage-coach 41 

Christmas Day 50 

The Spectre Bridegroom 68 

Westminster Abbey 88 

L 'Envoy 105 



The Selections from "The Sketch Book" included in 
this number of The Riverside Liter lture Series are used by 
permission of. and by arrangement with, Messrs. G. P. Put- 
nam's £oj.s, the authorized publishers of Irvings Works. 



Copyright, 1891, 
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 



All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 3Iass., IT. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. 



WASHINGTON IEVING. 



THE AUTHOR'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF. 

"I am of this mind with Homer, that as the snaile that crept out of her shel was 
turned eftsoones into a toad, and thereby was forced to make a stoole to sit on ; 
so the traveller that stragleth from his owne country is in a short time transformed 
into so monstrous a shape, that he is faine to alter his mansion with his manners, 
and to live where he can, not where he would." — Lyly^s Euphues. 1 

I was always fond of visiting new scenes, and 
observing strange characters and manners. Even 
when a mere child I began my travels, and made 
many tours of discovery into foreigA parts and un- 
known regions of my native city, to the frequent 
alarm of my parents, and the emolument of the 
town crier. As I grew into boyhood, I extended the 
range of my observations. My holiday afternoons 
were spent in rambles about the surrounding country. 
I made myself familiar with all its places famous in 
history or fable. I knew every spot where a murder 
or robbery had been committed, or a ghost seen. I 
visited the neighboring villages, and added greatly to 
my stock of knowledge, by noting their habits and 
customs, and conversing with their savages and great 
men. I even journeyed one long summer's day to the 

1 John Lyly, an English dramatic poet, was born in 1553 and 
died about 1600. He published in 1568 Euphues : the Anatomy 
of Wit, a book famous for its affected and dainty style, and for 
its influence on public taste in the times of Elizabeth. 



2 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

summit of the most distant bill, whence I stretched my 
eye over many a mile of terra incognita, 1 and was 
astonished to find how vast a globe I inhabited. 

This rambling propensity strengthened with my 
years. Books of voyages and travels became my 
passion, and in devouring their contents, I neglected 
the regular exercises of the school. How wistfully 
would I wander about the pier -heads in fine weather, 
and watch the parting ships, bound to distant climes 
— with what longing eyes would I gaze after their 
lessening sails, and waft myself in imagination to the 
ends of the earth ! 

Further reading and thinking, though they brought 
this vague inclination into more reasonable bounds, 
only served to make it more decided. I visited various 
parts of my own country; and had I been merely a 
lover of fine scenery, I should have felt little desire to 
seek elsewhere its gratification : for on no country had 
the charms of nature been more prodigally lavished. 
Her mighty lakes, like oceans of liquid silver; her 
mountains, with their bright aerial tints ; her valleys, 
teeming with wild fertility ; her tremendous cataracts, 
thundering in their solitudes; her boundless plains, 
waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad deep 
rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her 
trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its 
magnificence; her skies, kindling with the magic of 
summer clouds and glorious sunshine, — no, never 
need an American look beyond his own country for 
the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery. 

But Europe . held forth the charms of storied and 
poetical association. There were to be seen the mas- 
terpieces of art, the refinements of highly cultivated 
1 Ter'ra incog'nita, land unknown. 



THE AUTHOR'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF. 3 

society, the quaint peculiarities of aucient and local 
custom. My native country was full of youthful 
promise; Europe was rich in the accumulated trea- 
sures of age. Her very ruins told the history of times 
gone by, and every mouldering stone was a chronicle. 
I longed to wander over the scenes of renowned 
achievement — to tread, as it were, in the footsteps 
of antiquity — to loiter about the ruined castle — to 
meditate on the falling tower — to escape, in short, 
from the common-place realities of the present, and 
lose myself among the shadowy grandeurs of the past. 

I had, besides all this, an earnest desire to see the 
great men of the earth. We have, it is true, our 
great men in America : not a city but has an ample 
share of them. I have mingled among them in my 
time, and been almost withered by the shade into 
which they cast me ; for there is nothing so baleful to 
a small man as the shade of a great one, particularly 
the great man of a city. But I was anxious to see 
the great men of Europe ; for I had read in the works 
of various philosophers, that all animals degenerated 
in America, and mail among the number. A great 
man of Europe, thought I, must therefore be as supe- 
rior to a great man of America, as a peak of the Alps 
to a highland of the Hudson; and in this idea I was 
confirmed, by observing the comparative importance 
and swelling magnitude of many English travellers 
among us, who, I was assured, were very little people 
in their own country. I will visit this land of wonders, 
thought I, and see the gigantic race from which I am 
degenerated. 

It has been either my good or evil lot to have my 
roving passion gratified. I have wandered through 
different countries and witnessed many of the shifting 



4 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

scenes of life. I cannot say that I have studied them 
with the eye of a philosopher, but rather with the 
sauntering gaze with which humble lovers of the pic- 
turesque stroll from the window of one print-shop to 
another; caught sometimes by the delineations of 
beauty, sometimes by the distortions of caricature, 
and sometimes by the loveliness of landscape. As it 
is the fashion for modern tourists to travel pencil in 
hand, and bring home their portfolios filled with 
sketches, I am disposed to get up a few for the enter- 
tainment of my friends. When, however, I look over 
the hints and memorandums I have taken down for 
the purpose my heart almost fails me, at finding how 
my idle humor has led me aside from the great object 
studied by every regular traveller who would make a 
book. I fear I shall give equal disappointment with 
an unlucky landscape-painter, who had travelled on 
the continent, but, following the bent of his vagrant 
inclination, had sketched in nooks, and corners, and 
by-places. His sketch book was accordingly crowded 
with cottages, and landscapes, and obscure ruins ; but 
he had neglected to paint St. Peter's, or the Coli- 
seum; the cascade of Terni, 1 or the bay of Naples; 
and had not a single glacier or volcano in his whole 
collection. 

1 Terni is a town in Italy about fifty miles from Home. The 
cascade is on a branch of the river Nera. The water falls by 
three leaps about 750 feet, making one of the most beautiful and 
romantic cataracts in the world. 



THE VOYAGE. 



THE VOYAGE. 1 

Ships, ships, I will descrie you 

Amidst the main, 
I will come and try you, 
What you are protecting, 
And projecting, 
What 's your end and aim. 
One goes abroad for merchandise and trading, 
Another stays to keep his country from invading, 
A third is coming home with rich and wealthy lading. 
Halloo ! my fancie, whither wilt thou go ? 

Old Poem. 

To an American visiting Europe, the long voyage 
he has to make is an excellent preparative. The 
temporary absence of worldly scenes and employ- 
ments produces a state of mind peculiarly fitted to 
receive new and vivid impressions. The vast space of 
waters that separates the hemispheres is like a blank 
page in existence. There is no gradual transition by 
which, as in Europe, the features and population of 
one country blend almost imperceptibly with those of 
another. From the moment you lose sight of the land 
you have left, all is vacancy, until you step on the 
opposite shore, and are launched at once into the 
bustle and novelties of another world. 

In travelling by land there is a continuity of scene, 
and a connected succession of persons and incidents, 
that carry on the story of life, and lessen the effect 
of absence and separation. We drag, it is true, "a 

1 Irving's first voyage to Europe was made in 1804 in a sail- 
ing vessel. He was at that time twenty-one years of age. He 
visited Europe a second time in 1815, going, as before, in a sail- 
ing vessel, for, although Fulton was successful with his steam- 
boat on the Hudson as early as 1807, the Atlantic was not crossed 
by steamer until 1838. The Sketch-Book appeared in 1819 and 
1820 in seven successive numbers, the first of which contained 
The Voyage. 



6 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

lengthening chain" at each remove of our pilgrimage; 
but the chain is unbroken ; we can trace it back link 
by link; and we feel that the last still grapples us to 
home. But a wide sea voyage severs us at once. It 
makes us conscious of being cast loose from the secure 
anchorage of settled life, and sent adrift upon a doubt- 
ful world. It interposes a gulf, not merely imaginary, 
but real, between us and our homes — a gulf subject 
to tempest, and fear, and uncertainty, rendering dis- 
tance palpable and return precarious. 

Such, at least, was the case with myself. As I saw 
the last blue line of my native land fade away like a 
cloud in the horizon, it seemed as if I had closed one 
volume of the world and its concerns, and had time 
for meditation, before I opened another. That land, 
too, now vanishing from my view, which contained all 
most dear to me in life; what vicissitudes might occur 
in it, what changes might take place in me, before I 
should visit it again! Who can tell, when he sets 
forth to wander, whither he may be driven by the 
uncertain currents of existence; or when he may 
return ; or whether it may ever be his lot to revisit the 
scenes of his childhood? 

I said that at sea all is vacancy ; I should correct 
the expression. To one given to day-dreaming, and 
fond of losing himself in reveries, a sea voyage is full 
of subjects for meditation; but then they are the won- 
ders of the deep and of the air, and rather tend to 
abstract the mind from worldly themes. I delighted 
to loll over the quarter -railing or climb to the main- 
top, of a calm day, and muse for hours together on 
the tranquil bosom of a summer's sea; to gaze upon 
the piles of golden clouds just peering above the hori- 
zon, fancy them some fairy realms, and people them 



THE VOYAGE. 7 

with a creation of my own ; to watch the gentle undu- 
lating billows, rolling their silver volumes, as if to 
die away on those happy shores. 

There was a delicious sensation of mingled security 
and awe with which I looked down, from my giddy 
height, on the monsters of the deep at their uncouth 
gambols : shoals of porpoises tumbling about the bow* 
of the ship; the grampus, slowly heaving his huge 
form above the surface; or the ravenous shark, dart- 
ing, like a spectre, through the blue waters. My im- 
agination would conjure up all that I had heard or 
read of the watery world beneath me: of the finny 
herds that roam its fathomless valleys; of the shape- 
less monsters that lurk among the very foundations 
of the earth, and of those wild phantasms that swell 
the tales of fishermen and sailors. 

Sometimes a distant sail, gliding along the edge of 
the ocean, would be another theme of idle speculation. 
How interesting this fragment of a world, hastening 
to rejoin the great mass of existence ! What a glori- 
ous monument of human invention; which has in a 
manner triumphed over wind and wave ; has brought 
the ends of the world into communion ; has established 
an interchange of blessings, pouring into the sterile 
regions of the north all the luxuries of the south ; has 
diffused the light of knowledge and the charities of 
cultivated life; and has thus bound together those 
scattered portions of the human race, between which 
nature seemed to have thrown an insurmountable bar- 
rier. 

We one day descried some shapeless object drifting 
at a distance. At sea, everything that breaks the 
monotony of the surrounding expanse attracts atten- 
tion. It proved to be the mast of a ship that must 



8 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

have been completely wrecked; for there were the 
remains of handkerchiefs, by which some of the crew 
had fastened themselves to this spar, to prevent their 
being washed off by the waves. There was no trace 
by which the name of the ship could be ascertained. 
The wreck had evidently drifted about many months ; 
•clusters of shell-fish had fastened about it, and long 
sea-weeds flaunted at its sides. But where, thought 
I, is the crew ? Their struggle has long been over — 
they have gone down amidst the roar of the tempest 
— their bones lie whitening among the caverns of the 
deep. Silence, oblivion, like the waves, have closed 
over them, and no one can tell the story of their end. 
What sighs have been wafted after that ship! what 
prayers offered up at the deserted fireside of home ! 
How often has the mistress, the wife, the mother, 
pored over the daily news, to catch some casual intel- 
ligence of this rover of the deep ! How has expecta- 
tion darkened into anxiety — anxiety into dread — 
and dread into despair ! Alas ! not one memento may 
ever return for love to cherish. All that shall ever 
be known is that she sailed from her port, u and was 
never heard of more ! " 

The sight of this wreck, as usual, gave rise to 
many dismal anecdotes. This was particularly the 
case in the evening, when the weather, which had 
hitherto been fair, began to look wild and threatening, 
and gave indications of one of those sudden storms 
which will sometimes break in upon the serenity of a 
summer voyage. As we sat round the dull light of 
a lamp in the cabin, that made the gloom more ghastly, 
every one had his tale of shipwreck and disaster. I 
was particularly struck with a short one related by 
the captain. 



THE VOYAGE. 9 

"As I was once sailing," said he, "in a fine stout 
ship across the banks of Newfoundland, one of those 
heavy fogs which prevail in those parts rendered it 
impossible for us to see far ahead, even in the day- 
time ; but at night the weather was so thick that we 
could not distinguish any object at twice the length of 
the ship. I kept lights at the mast-head, and a con- 
stant watch forward to look out for fishing smacks, 
which are accustomed to lie at anchor on the banks. 
The wind was blowing a smacking breeze, and we 
were going at a great rate through the water. Sud- 
denly the watch gave the alarm of ' a sail ahead ! ' — 
it was scarcely uttered before we were upon her. She 
was a small schooner, at anchor, with her broadside 
toward us. The crew were all asleep, and had 
neglected to hoist a light. We struck her just amid- 
ships. The force, the size, the weight of our vessel, 
bore her down below the waves ; we passed over her 
and were hurried on our course. As the crashing 
wreck was sinking beneath us, I had a glimpse of two 
or three half -naked wretches rushing from her cabin ; 
they just started from their beds to be swallowed 
shrieking by the waves. I heard their drowning cry 
mingling with the wind. The blast that bore it to 
our ears swept us out of all farther hearing. I shall 
never forget that cry! It was some time before we 
could put the ship about, she was under such headway. 
We returned, as nearly as we could guess, to the place 
where the smack had anchored. We cruised about 
for several hours in the dense fog. We fired signal- 
guns, and listened if we might hear the halloo of any 
survivors ; but all was silent — we never saw or heard 
anything of them more." 

I confess these stories, for a time, put an end to all 



10 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

my fine fancies. The storm increased with the night. 
The sea was lashed into tremendous confusion. There 
was a fearful, sullen sound of rushing waves and 
broken surges. Deep called unto deep. At times 
the black volume of clouds overhead seemed rent 
asunder by flashes of lightning which quivered along 
the foaming billows, and made the succeeding darkness 
doubly terrible. The thunders bellowed over the wild 
waste of waters, and were echoed and prolonged by 
the mountain waves. As I saw the ship staggering 
and plunging among these roaring caverns, it seemed 
miraculous that she regained her balance, or preserved 
her buoyancy. Her yards would dip into the water; 
her bow was almost buried beneath the waves. Some- 
times an impending surge appeared ready to over- 
whelm her, and nothing but a dexterous movement of 
the helm preserved her from the shock. 

When I retired to my cabin, the awful scene still 
followed me. The whistling of the wind through the 
rigging sounded like funereal wailings. The creaking 
of the masts, the straining and groaning of bulk-heads, 
as the ship labored in the weltering sea, were frightful. 
As I heard the waves rushing along the sides of the 
ship, and roaring in my very ear, it seemed as if Death 
were raging round this floating prison, seeking for his 
prey : the mere starting of a nail, the yawning of a 
seam, might give him entrance. 

A fine day, however, with a tranquil sea and favor- 
ing breeze, soon put all these dismal reflections to 
flight. It is impossible to resist the gladdening in- 
fluence of fine weather and fair wind at sea. When 
the ship is decked out in all her canvas, every sail 
swelled, and careering gayly over the curling waves, 
how lofty, how gallant she appears — how she seems 



THE VOYAGE. 11 

to lord it over the deep ! I might fill a volume with 
the reveries of a sea voyage, for with me it is almost 
a continual reverie — but it is time to get to shore. 

It was a fine sunny morning when the thrilling cry 
of "land! "was given from the mast-head. None but 
those who have experienced it can form an idea of the 
delicious throng of sensations which rush into an 
American's bosom when he first comes in sight of 
Europe. There is a volume of associations with the 
very name. It is the land of promise, teeming with 
everything o£ which his childhood has heard, or on 
which his studious years have pondered. 

From that time until the moment of arrival, it 
was all feverish excitement. The ships of war, that 
prowled like guardian gaints along the coast; the 
headlands of Ireland, stretching out into the channel ; 
the Welsh mountains, towering into the clouds; all 
were objects of intense interest. As we sailed up the 
Mersey, I reconnoitred the shores with a telescope. 
My eye dwelt with delight on neat cottages, with their 
trim shrubberies and green grassplots. I saw the 
mouldering ruin of an abbey overrun with ivy, and 
the taper spire of a village church rising from the brow 
of a neighboring hill — all were characteristic of Eng- 
land. 

The tide and wind were so favorable that the ship 
was enabled to come at once to the pier. It was 
thronged with people: some, idle lookers-on; others, 
eager expectants of friends or relatives. I could dis- 
tinguish the merchant to whom the ship was consigned. 
I knew him by his calculating brow and restless air. 
His hands were thrust into his pockets; he was whis- 
tling thoughtfully, and walking to and fro, a small 
space having been accorded him by the crowd, in 



12 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

deference to his temporary importance. There were 
repeated cheerings and salutations interchanged be- 
tween the shore and the ship, as friends happened to 
recognize each other. I particularly noticed one 
young woman of humble dress, but interesting 
demeanor. She was leaning forward from among the 
crowd; her eye hurried over the ship as it neared the 
shore, to catch some wished-for countenance. She 
seemed disappointed and agitated; when I heard a 
faint voice call her name. It was from a poor sailor who 
had been ill all the voyage, and had excited the sym- 
pathy of every one on board. When the weather was 
fine, his messmates had spread a mattress for him on 
deck in the shade, but of late his illness had so 
increased that he had taken to his hammock, and only 
breathed a wish that he might see his wife before he 
died. He had been helped on deck as we came up the 
river, and was now leaning against the shrouds, with 
a countenance so wasted, so pale, so ghastly, that it 
was no wonder even the eye of affection did not recog- 
nize him. But at the sound of his voice, her eye darted 
on his features ; it read at once a whole volume of sor- 
row; she clasped her hands, uttered a faint shriek, 
and stood wringing them in silent agony. 

All now was hurry and bustle. The meetings of 
acquaintances — the greetings of friends — the con- 
sultations of men of business. I alone was solitary 
and idle. I had no friend to meet, no cheering to 
receive. I stepped upon the land of my forefathers 
— but felt that I was a stranger in the land. 



RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 13 



RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 1 

Oh ! friendly to the best pursuits of man, 
Friendly to thought, to virtue, and to peace, 
Domestic life in rural pleasure past ! 

Cowper. 

The stranger who would form a correct opinion of 
the English character must not confine his observa- 
tions to the metropolis. He must go forth into the 
country; he must sojourn in villages and hamlets; he 
must visit castles, villas, farmhouses, villages; he 
must wander through parks and gardens; along 
hedges and green lanes ; he must loiter about country 
churches ; attend wakes and fairs, and other rural fes- 
tivals; and cope with the people in all their condi- 
tions, and all their habits and humors. 

In some countries the large cities absorb the wealth 
and fashion of the nation; they are the only fixed 
abodes of elegant and intelligent society, and the 
country is inhabited almost entirely by boorish pea- 
santry. In England, on the contrary, the metropolis 
is a mere gathering-place, or general rendezvous, of 
the polite classes, where they devote a small portion 
of the year to a hurry of gayety and dissipation, and, 

1 Irving' s brief residence in England after his first voyage and 
his longer stay there after his second (see note on page 5) ad- 
mirably fitted him to sympathize with English country life. He 
visited Thomas Campbell, Thomas Moore, Sir Walter Scott, and 
other English celebrities, and was everywhere most hospitably 
received. Says Mr. Godwin, an English author, of Rural Life, 
" It is, I believe, all true ; and one wonders, while reading, that 
nobody ever said this before." Richard H. Dana in a critical 
notice says, " We come from reading Rural Life in England as 
much restored and cheerful as if we had been passing an hour or 
two in the very fields and woods themselves." 



14 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

having indulged this kind of carnival, return again to 
the apparently more congenial habits of rural life. 
The various orders of society are therefore diffused 
over the whole surface of the kingdom, and the most 
retired neighborhoods afford specimens of the different 
ranks. 

The English, in fact, are strongly gifted with the 
rural feeling. They possess a quick sensibility to the 
beauties of nature, and a keen relish for the pleasures 
and employments of the country. This passion seems 
inherent in them. Even the inhabitants of cities, 
born and brought up among brick walls and bustling 
streets, enter with facility into rural habits, and evince 
a tact for rural occupation. The merchant has his 
snug retreat in the vicinity of the metropolis, where he 
often displays as much pride and zeal in the cultiva- 
tion of his flower-garden, and the maturing of his 
fruits, as he does in the conduct of his business, and 
the success of a commercial enterprise. Even those 
less fortunate individuals, who are doomed to pass 
their lives in the midst of din and traffic, contrive to 
have something that shall remind them of the green 
aspect of nature. In the most dark and dingy quar- 
ters of the city, the drawing-room window resembles 
frequently a bank of flowers; every spot capable of 
vegetation has its grassplot and flower-bed, and every 
square its mimic park, laid out with picturesque taste, 
and gleaming with refreshing verdure. 

Those who see the Englishman only in town are apt 
to form an unfavorable opinion of his social character. 
He is either absorbed in business, or distracted by the 
thousand engagements that dissipate time, thought, 
and feeling, in this huge metropolis. He has, there- 
fore, too commonly, a look of hurry and abstraction. 



RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 15 

Wherever he happens to be, he is on the point of 
going somewhere else ; at the moment he is talking on 
one subject, his mind is wandering to another; and 
while paying a friendly visit, he is calculating how he 
shall economize time so as to pay the other visits 
allotted in the morning. An immense metropolis, 
like London, is calculated to make men selfish and 
uninteresting. In their casual and transient meet- 
ings, they can but deal briefly in commonplaces. 
They present but the cold superficies of character — - 
its rich and genial qualities have no time to be 
warmed into a flow. 

It is in the country that the Englishman gives scope 
to his natural feelings. He breaks loose gladly from 
the cold formalities and negative civilities of town; 
throws off his habits of shy reserve, and becomes joy- 
ous and free-hearted. He manages to collect round 
him all the conveniences and elegancies of polite life, 
and to banish its restraints. His country seat abounds 
with every requisite, either for studious retirement, 
tasteful gratification, or rural exercise. Books, paint- 
ings, music, horses, dogs, and sporting implements of 
all kinds, are at hand. He puts no constraint, either 
upon his guests or himself, but, in the true spirit of 
hospitality, provides the means of enjoyment, and 
leaves every one to partake according to his inclina- 
tion. 

The taste of the English in the cultivation of land, 
and in what is called landscape gardening, is unri- 
valled. They have studied Nature intently, and dis- 
covered an exquisite sense of her beautiful forms and 
harmonious combinations. Those charms which, in 
other countries, she lavishes in wild solitudes, are here 
assembled round the haunts of domestic life. They 



16 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

seem to have caught her coy and furtive graces, and 
spread them, like witchery, about their rural abodes. 

Nothing can be more imposing than the magnifi- 
cence of English park scenery. Vast lawns that ex- 
tend like sheets of vivid green, with here and there 
clumps of gigantic trees, heaping up rich piles of fo- 
liage. The solemn pomp of groves and woodland 
glades, with the deer trooping in silent herds across 
them ; the hare, bounding away to the covert ; or the 
pheasant, suddenly bursting upon the wing. The 
brook, taught to wind in natural meanderings, or 
expand into a glassy lake; the sequestered pool, re- 
flecting the quivering trees, with the yellow leaf sleep- 
ing on its bosom, and the trout roaming fearlessly 
about its limpid waters ; while some rustic temple, or 
sylvan statue, grown green and dank with age, gives 
an air of classic sanctity to the seclusion. 

These are but a few of the features of park scenery ; 
but what most delights me is the creative talent with 
which the English decorate the unostentatious abodes 
of middle life. The rudest habitation, the most 
unpromising and scanty portion of land, in the hands 
of an Englishman of taste, becomes a little paradise. 
With a nicely discriminating eye, he seizes at once 
upon its capabilities, and pictures in his mind the fu- 
ture landscape. The sterile spot grows into loveliness 
under his hand; and yet the operations of art which 
produce the effect are scarcely to be perceived. The 
cherishing and training of some trees; the cautious 
pruning of others ; the nice distribution of flowers and 
plants of tender and graceful foliage ; the introduction 
of a green slope of velvet turf ; the partial opening to 
a peep of blue distance, or silver gleam of water, — 
all these are managed with a delicate tact, a pervading 



RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 17 

yet quiet assiduity, like the magic touchings with 
which a painter finishes up a favorite picture. 

The residence of people of fortune and refinement 
in the country has diffused a degree of taste and ele- 
gance in rural economy, that descends to the lowest 
class. The very laborer, with his thatched cottage 
and narrow slip of ground, attends to their embellish- 
ment. The trim hedge, the grassplot before the door, 
the little flower-bed bordered with snug box, the 
woodbine trained up against the wall and hanging its 
blossoms about the lattice ; the pot of flowers in the 
window; the holly, providently planted about the 
house, to cheat winter of its dreariness, and to throw 
in a semblance of green summer to cheer the fireside, 
— all these bespeak the influence of taste, flowing 
down from high sources, and pervading the lowest 
levels of the public mind. If ever Love, as poets sing, 
delights to visit a cottage, it must be the cottage of an 
English peasant. 

The fondness for rural life among the higher classes 
of the English has had a great and salutary effect 
upon the national character. I do not know a finer 
race of men than the English gentlemen. Instead of 
the softness and effeminacy which characterize the 
men of rank in most countries, they exhibit a union 
of elegance and strength, a robustness of frame and 
freshness of complexion, which I am inclined to attri- 
bute to their living so much in the open air, and pur- 
suing so eagerly the invigorating recreations of the 
country. These hardy exercises produce also a health- 
ful tone of mind and spirits, and a manliness and 
simplicity of manners, which even the follies and dis- 
sipations of the town cannot easily pervert, and can 
never entirely destroy. In the country, too, the differ- 



18 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

ent orders of society seem to approach more freely, to 
be more disposed to blend and operate favorably upon 
each other. The distinctions between them do not 
appear to be so marked and impassable as in the cities. 
The manner in which property has been distributed 
into small estates and farms has established a regu- 
lar gradation from the noblemen, through the classes 
of gentry, small landed proprietors, and substantial 
farmers, down to the laboring peasantry ; and while it 
has thus banded the extremes of society together, has 
infused into each intermediate rank a spirit of inde- 
pendence. This, it must be confessed, is not so uni- 
versally the case at present as it was formerly; the 
larger estates having, in late years of distress, ab- 
sorbed the smaller, and in some parts of the country 
almost annihilated the sturdy race of small farmers. 
These, however, I believe are but casual breaks in the 
general system I have mentioned. 

In rural occupation there is nothing mean and debas- 
ing. It leads a man forth among scenes of natural 
grandeur and beauty ; it leaves him to the workings of 
his own mind, operated upon by the purest and most 
elevating of external influences. Such a man may be 
sinrple and rough, but he cannot be vulgar. The man 
of refinement, therefore, finds nothing revolting in 
an intercourse with the lower orders in rural life, as 
he does when he casually mingles with the lower 
orders of cities. He lays aside his distance and reserve, 
and is glad to waive the distinctions of rank and to 
enter into the honest, heartfelt enjoyments of com- 
mon life. Indeed the very amusements of the country 
bring men more and more together; and the sound of 
hound and horn blend all feelings into harmony. I 
believe this is one great reason why the nobility and 



RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 19 

gentry are more popular among the inferior orders in 
England than they are in any other country ; and why 
the latter have endured so many excessive pressures 
and extremities, without repining more generally at 
the unequal distribution of fortune and privilege. 

To this mingling of cultivated and rustic society 
may also be attributed the rural feeling that runs 
through British literature ; the frequent use of illustra- 
tions from rural life ; those incomparable descriptions 
of Nature that abound in the British poets, that have 
continued down from "The Flower and the Leaf" of 
Chaucer, 1 and have brought into our closets all the 
freshness and fragrance of the dewy landscape. The 
pastoral writers of other countries appear as if they 
had paid Nature an occasional visit, and become 
acquainted with her general charms ; but the British 
poets have lived and revelled with her — they have 
wooed her in her most secret haunts — they have 
watched her minutest caprices. A spray could not 
tremble in the breeze — a leaf could not rustle to the 
ground — a diamond drop could not patter in the 
stream — a fragrance could not exhale from the hum- 
ble violet, nor a daisy unfold its crimson tints to the 
morning, but it has been noticed by these impas- 
sioned and delicate observers, and wrought up into 
some beautiful morality. 

The effect of this devotion of elegant minds to rural 
occupations has been wonderful on the face of the 
country. A great part of the island is rather level, 

1 The Dictionary of National Biography, edited by Leslie Ste- 
phen, says that The Flower and the Leaf is one of many pieces 
that used to pass current as Chaucer's, but are undoubtedly spu- 
rious. Internal evidence shows that this poem was written later 
than Chaucer's time, and by a lady. 



20 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

and would be monotonous, were it not for the charms 
of culture; but it is studded and gemmed, as it were, 
with castles and palaces, and embroidered with parks 
and gardens. It does not abound in grand and sub- 
lime prospects, but rather in little home scenes of rural 
repose and sheltered quiet. Every antique farm- 
house and moss-grown cottage is a picture ; and as the 
roads are continually winding, and the view is shut in 
by groves and hedges, the eye is delighted by a contin- 
ual succession of small landscapes of captivating love- 
liness. 

The great charm, however, of English scenery is 
the moral feeling that seems to pervade it. It is asso- 
ciated in the mind with ideas of order, of quiet, of 
sober well-established principles, of hoary usage and 
reverend custom. Everything seems to be the growth 
of ages of regular and peaceful existence. The old 
church, of remote architecture, with its low massive 
portal; its gothic tower; its windows, rich with tra- 
cery and painted glass in scrupulous preservation ; its 
stately monuments of warriors and worthies of the 
olden time, ancestors of the present lords of the soil; 
its tombstones, recording successive generations of 
sturdy yeomanry, whose progeny still plough the same 
fields, and kneel at the same altar; the parsonage, 
a quaint irregular pile, partly antiquated, but re- 
paired and altered in the tastes of various ages and 
occupants; the stile and footpath leading from the 
church-yard, across pleasant fields, and along shady 
hedge-rows, according to an immemorial right of way ; 
the neighboring village, with its venerable cottages, its 
public green, sheltered by trees, under which the fore- 
fathers of the present race have sported ; the antique 
family mansion, standing apart in some little rural 



RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND. 21 

domain, but looking down with a protecting air on the 
surrounding scene — all these common features of 
English landscape evince a calm and settled security, 
an hereditary transmission of homebred virtues and 
local attachments, that speak deeply and touchingly 
for the moral character of the nation. 

It is a pleasing sight, of a Sunday morning, when 
the bell is sending its sober melody across the quiet 
fields, to behold the peasantry in their best finery, 
with ruddy faces, and modest cheerfulness, thronging 
tranquilly along the green lanes to church; but it is 
still more pleasing to see them in the evenings, gath- 
ering about their cottage doors, and appearing to 
exult in the humble comforts and embellishments 
which their own hands have spread around them. 

It is this sweet home feeling, this settled repose of 
affection in the domestic scene, that is, after all, the 
parent of the steadiest virtues and purest enjoyments; 
and I cannot close these desultory remarks better, 
than by quoting the words of a modern English poet, 1 
who has depicted it with remarkable felicity : — 

Through each gradation, from the castled hall, 
The city dome, the villa crowned with shade, 
But chief from modest mansions numberless, 
In town or hamlet, shelt'ring middle life, 
Down to the cottaged vale, and straw-roof 'd shed, 
This western isle hath long been famed for scenes 
Where bliss domestic finds a dwelling-place : 
Domestic bliss, that like a harmless dove 
(Honor and sweet endearment keeping guard) 



1 Rev. Rann Kennedy, a clergyman of Birmingham, and a 
friend of Irving's. The passage is from Kennedy's poem on the 
Princess Charlotte, the only daughter of George IV. She died 
in 1817, at the age of twenty-one. 



22 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

Can centre in a little quiet nest 

All that desire would fly for through the earth 

That can, the world eluding, be itself 

A world enjoyed ; that wants no witnesses 

But its own sharers, and approving Heaven ; 

That, like a flower deep hid in rocky cleft, 

Smiles, though 't is looking only at the sky. 



THE COUNTRY CHURCH. 

A gentleman I 
What, o' the woolpack ? or the sugar- chest ? 
Or lists of velvet ? which is 't, pound, or yard, 
You vend your gentry by ? 

Beggar's Bush. 1 

There are few places more favorable to the study 
of character than an English country church. I was 
once passing a few weeks at the seat of a friend, who 
resided in the vicinity of one, the appearance of which 
particularly struck my fancy. It was one of those 
rich morsels of quaint antiquity which give such a 
peculiar charm to English landscape. It stood in the 
midst of a country filled with ancient families, and 
contained, within its cold and silent aisles, the con- 
gregated dust of many noble generations. The inte- 
rior walls were encrusted with monuments of every age 
and style. The light streamed through windows 
dimmed with armorial bearings, richly emblazoned in 
stained glass. In various parts of the church were 
tombs of knights, and high-born dames, of gorgeous 
workmanship, with their effigies in colored marble. 

1 A comedy by John Fletcher (1579-1625), dramatist. It de- 
picts the woodland life of beggars. 



THE COUNTRY CHURCH. 23 

On every side, the eye was struck with some instance 
of aspiring mortality ; some haughty memorial which 
human pride had erected over its kindred dust, in this 
temple of the most humble of all religions. 

The congregation was composed of the neighboring 
people of rank, who sat in pews sumptuously lined 
and cushioned, furnished with richly-gilded prayer- 
books, and decorated with their arms upon the pew 
doors ; of the villagers and peasantry, who filled the 
back seats and a small gallery beside the organ ; and 
of the poor of the parish, who were ranged on benches 
in the aisles. 

The service was performed by a snuffling, well-fed 
vicar, who had a snug dwelling near the church. He 
was a privileged guest at all the tables of the neigh- 
borhood, and had been the keenest fox-hunter in the 
country, until age and good living had disabled him 
from doing anything more than ride to see the hounds 
throw off, and make one at the hunting dinner. 

Under the ministry of such a pastor, I found it im- 
possible to get into the train of thought suitable to the 
time and place; so having, like many other feeble 
Christians, compromised with my conscience, by lay- 
ing the sin of my own delinquency at another person's 
threshold, I occupied myself by making observations 
on my neighbors. 

I was as yet a stranger in England, and curious to 
notice the manners of its fashionable classes. I found 
as usual, that there was the least pretension where 
there was the most acknowledged title to respect. I 
was particularly struck, for instance, with the family 
of a nobleman of high rank, consisting of several sons 
and daughters. Nothing could be more simple and un- 
assuming than their appearance. They generally came 



24 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

to church in the plainest equipage and often on foot. 
The young ladies would stop and converse in the kind- 
est manner with the peasantry, caress the children, 
and listen to the stories of the humble cottagers. 
Their countenances were* open and beautifully fair, 
with an expression of high refinement, but, at the 
same time, a frank cheerfulness, and engaging affa- 
bility. Their brothers were tall, and elegantly 
formed. They were dressed fashionably, but simply; 
with strict neatness and propriety, but without any 
mannerism or foppishness. Their whole demeanor 
was easy and natural, with that lofty grace, and noble 
frankness, which bespeak free-born souls that have 
never been checked in their growth by feelings of 
inferiority. There is a healthful hardiness about 
real dignity, that never dreads contact and commu- 
nion with others, however humble. It is only spurious 
pride that is morbid and sensitive, and shrinks from 
every touch. I was pleased to see the manner in 
which they would converse with the peasantry about 
those rural concerns and field sports, in which the 
gentlemen of this country so much delight. In these 
conversations there was neither haughtiness on the 
one part, nor servility on the other; and you were 
only reminded of the difference of rank by the habit- 
ual respect of the peasant. 

In contrast to these was the family of a wealthy 
citizen, who had amassed a vast fortune, and, having 
purchased the estate and mansion of a ruined noble- 
man in the neighborhood, was endeavoring to assume 
all the style and dignity of an hereditary lord of the 
soil. The family always came to church en prince. 1 
They were rolled majestically along in a carriage 
1 After the fashion of a prince. 



THE COUNTRY CHURCH. 25 

emblazoned with arms. The crest glittered in silver 
radiance from every part of the harness where a crest 
could possibly be placed. A fat coachman in a three- 
cornered hat, richly laced, and a flaxen wig, curling 
close round his rosy face, was seated on the box, with 
a sleek Danish dog beside him. Two footmen in gor- 
geous liveries, with huge bouquets, and gold-headed 
canes, lolled behind. The carriage rose and sunk on 
its long springs with peculiar stateliness of motion. 
The very horses champed their bits, arched their 
necks, and glanced their eyes more proudly than 
common horses ; either because they had caught a 
little of the family feeling, or were reined up more 
tightly than ordinary. 

I could not but admire the style with which this 
splendid pageant was brought up to the gate of the 
church-yard. There was a vast effect produced at the 
turning of an angle of the wall, — a great smacking 
of the whip, straining and scrambling of horses, glis- 
tening of harness, and flashing of wheels through 
gravel. This was the moment of triumph and vain- 
glory to the coachman. The horses were urged and 
checked until they were fretted into a foam. They 
threw out their feet in a prancing trot, dashing about 
pebbles at every step. The crowd of villagers saun- 
tering quietly to church, opened precipitately to the* 
right and left, gaping in vacant admiration. On 
reaching the gate, the horses were pulled up with a 
suddenness that produced an immediate stop, and 
almost threw them on their haunches. 

There was an extraordinary hurry of the footmen 
to alight, pull down the steps, and prepare everything 
for the descent on earth of this august family. The 
old citizen first emerged his round red face from out 



26 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

the door, looking about him with the pompous air of 
a man accustomed to rule on 'Change, and shake the 
stock-market with a nod. His consort, a fine, fleshy, 
comfortable dame, followed him. There seemed, I 
must confess, but little pride in her composition. She 
was the picture of broad, honest, vulgar enjoyment. 
The world went well with her ; and she liked the world. 
She had fine clothes, a fine house, a fine carriage, fine 
children, everything was fine about her: it was no- 
thing but driving about, and visiting and feasting. 
Life was to her a perpetual revel; it was one long 
Lord Mayor's day. 

Two daughters succeeded to this goodly couple. 
They certainly were handsome, but had a supercilious 
air that chilled admiration, and disposed the spectator 
to be critical. They were ultra-fashionable in dress, 
and though no one could deny the richness of their 
decorations, yet their appropriateness might be ques- 
tioned amidst the simplicity of a country church. 
They descended loftily from the carriage, and moved 
up the line of peasantry with a step that seemed dainty 
of the soil it trod on. They cast an excursive glance 
around, that passed coldly over the burly faces of the 
peasantry, until they met the eyes of the nobleman's 
family, when their countenances immediately bright- 
ened into smiles, and they made the most profound 
and elegant curtseys, which were returned in a man- 
ner that showed they were but slight acquaintances. 

I must not forget the two sons of this aspiring citi- 
zen, who came to church in a dashing curricle, with 
outriders. They, were arrayed in the extremity of 
the mode, with all that pedantry of dress which marks 
the man of questionable pretensions to style. They 
kept entirely by themselves, eyeing every one askance 



THE COUNTRY CHURCH. 27 

that came near them, as if measuring his claims to 
respectability; yet they were without conversation, 
except the exchange of an occasional cant phrase. 
They even moved artificially; for their bodies, in com- 
pliance with the caprice of the day, had been disci- 
plined into the absence of all ease and freedom. Art 
had done everything to accomplish them as men of 
fashion, but nature had denied them the nameless 
grace. They were vulgarly shaped, like men formed 
for the common purposes of life, and had that air of 
supercilious assumption which is never seen in the 
true gentleman. 

I have been rather minute in drawing the pictures 
of these two families, because I considered them spe- 
cimens of what is often to be met with in this coun- 
try — the unpretending great, and the arrogant little. 
I have no respect for titled rank, unless it be accom- 
panied with true nobility of soul ; but I have remarked, 
in all countries where artificial distinctions exist, that 
the very highest classes are always the most courteous 
and unassuming. Those who are well assured of 
their own standing are least apt to trespass on that of 
others; whereas, nothing is so offensive as the aspir- 
ings of vulgarity, which thinks to elevate itself by 
humiliating its neighbor. 

As I have brought these families into contrast, I 
must notice their behavior in church. That of the 
nobleman's family was quiet, serious, and attentive. 
Not that they appeared to have any fervor of devotion, 
but rather a respect for sacred things, and sacred 
places, inseparable from good breeding. The others, 
on the contrary, were in a perpetual flutter and whis- 
per ; they betrayed a continual consciousness of finery, 
and the sorry ambition of being the wonders of a rural 
congregation. 



28 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

The old gentleman was the only one really attentive 
to the service. He took the whole burden of family 
devotion upon himself; standing bolt upright, and 
uttering the responses with a loud voice that might be 
heard all over the church. It was evident that he 
was one of these thorough church and king men, who 
connect the idea of devotion and loyalty ; who consider 
the Deity, somehow or other, of the government party, 
and religion "a very excellent sort of thing, that 
ought to be countenanced and kept up." 

When he joined so loudly in the service, it seemed 
more by way of example to the lower orders, to show 
them that, though so great and wealthy, he was not 
above being religious ; as I have seen a turtle -fed 
alderman swallow publicly a basin of charity soup, 
smacking his lips at every mouthful, and pronouncing 
it " excellent food for the poor." 

When the service was at an end, I was curious to 
witness the several exits of my groups. The young 
noblemen and their sisters, as the day was fine, pre- 
ferred strolling home across the fields, chatting with 
the country people as they went. The others departed 
as they came, in grand parade. Again were the equi- 
pages wheeled up to the gate. There was again the 
smacking of whips, the clattering of hoofs, and the 
glittering of harness. The horses started off almost 
at a bound; the villagers again hurried to right and 
left ; the wheels threw up a ' cloud of dust ; and the 
aspiring family was wrapt out of sight in a whirl- 
wind. 



THE ANGLER. 29 



THE ANGLER. 

This day dame Nature seem'd in love, 

The lusty sap began to move, 

Fresh juice did stir th' embracing vines, 

And birds had drawn their valentines. 

The jealous trout that low did lie, 

Rose at a well-dissembled flie. 

There stood my friend, with patient skill, 

Attending of his trembling quill. 

Sir H. Wotton. 1 

It is said that many an unlucky urchin is induced 
to run away from his family, and betake himself to 
seafaring life, from reading the history of Robinson 
Crusoe ; and I suspect that, in like manner, many of 
those worthy gentlemen, who are given to haunt the 
sides of pastoral streams with angle-rods in hand, may 
trace the origin of their passion to the seductive pages 
of honest Izaak Walton. 2 I recollect studying his 
"Complete Angler" several years since, in company 
with a knot of friends in America, and, moreover, 
that we were all completely bitten with the angling 
mania. It was early in the year ; but as soon as the 
weather was auspicious, and that the spring began to 
melt into the verge of summer, we took rod in hand 

1 Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639) was an accomplished diplo- 
matist in the times of James I., and a gentleman of scholarly 
tastes and refined wit. 

2 Izaak Walton was born in 1593 and died in 1683. The Com- 
plete Angler was first published in 1653. Walton kept adding 
to its completeness for a quarter of a century, the thirteen chap- 
ters of the original edition having grown to twenty-one before he 
died. He " hooked a much bigger fish than he angled for," says 
the Encyclopcedia Britannica, " when he offered his quaint treatise 
to the public. There is hardly a name in our literature, even of 
the first rank, whose immortality is more secure." 



30 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

and sallied into the country, as stark mad as was ever 
Don Quixote 1 from reading books of chivalry. 

One of our party had equalled the Don in the fulness 
of his equipments, being attired cap-a-pie for the 
enterprise. He wore a broad-skirted fustian coat, 
perplexed with half a hundred pockets ; a pair of stout 
shoes, and leathern gaiters; a basket slung on one 
side for fish ; a patent rod ; a landing net, and a score 
of other inconveniences, only to be found in the true 
angler's armory. Thus harnessed for the field, he 
was as great a matter of stare and wonderment among 
the country folk, who had never seen a regular angler, 
as was the steel-clad hero of La Mancha among the 
goatherds of the Sierra Morena. 

Our first essay was along a mountain brook, among 
the highlands of the Hudson, — a most unfortunate 
place for the execution of those piscatory tactics 
which had been invented along the velvet margins 
of quiet English rivulets. It was one of those wild 
streams that lavish, among our romantic solitudes, 
unheeded beauties, enough to fill the sketch-book of 
a hunter of the picturesque. Sometimes it would leap 
down rocky shelves, making small cascades, over which 
the trees threw their broat balancing sprays, and long 
nameless weeds hung in fringes from the impending 
banks, dripping with diamond drops. Sometimes it 
would brawl and fret along a ravine in the matted 
shade of a forest, filling it with murmurs ; and, after 

1 The hero of a Spanish satirical romance by Cervantes (1547- 
1616), who feels called upon to become a knight-errant, to defend 
the oppressed and to succor the injured. He looks upon wind- 
mills as giants, flocks of sheep as armies, inns as castles, and 
galley-slaves as gentlemen in distress. He lived in a district 
known as La Mancha, and the Sierra Morena, a mountain range 
in Spain, was the theatre of many of his exploits. 



THE ANGLER. 31 

this termagant career, would steal forth into open day 
with the most placid demure face imaginable; as I 
have seen some pestilent shrew of a housewife, after 
filling her home with uproar and ill-humor, come dim- 
pling out of doors, swimming, and curtseying, and 
smiling upon all the world. 

How smoothly would this vagrant brook glide, at 
such times, through some bosom' of green meadow 
land, among the mountains ; where the quiet was only 
interrupted by the occasional tinkling of a bell from 
the lazy cattle among the clover, or the sound of a 
wood-cutter's axe from the neighboring forest! 

For my part, I was always a bungler at all kinds of 
sport that required either patience or adroitness, and 
had not angled above half an hour before I had com- 
pletely "satisfied the sentiment," and convinced my- 
self of the truth of Izaak Walton's opinion, that 
angling is something like poetry — a man must be born 
to it. I hooked myself instead of the fish ; tangled my 
line in every tree; lost my bait; broke my rod; until 
I gave up the attempt in despair, and passed the day 
under the trees, reading old Izaak; satisfied that it 
was his fascinating vein of honest simplicity and rural 
feeling that had bewitched me, and not the passion for 
angling. My companions, however, were more per- 
severing in their delusion. I have them at this mo- 
ment before my eyes, stealing along the border of the 
brook, where it lay open to the day, or was merely 
fringed by shrubs and bushes. I see the bittern ris- 
ing with hollow scream as they break in upon his 
rarely-invaded haunt; the kingfisher watching them 
suspiciously from his dry tree that overhangs the deep 
black mill-pond, in the gorge of the hills ; the tortoise 
letting himself slip sideways from off the stone or log 



32 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

on which he is sunning himself; and the panic -struck 
frog plumping in headlong as they approach, and 
spreading an alarm throughout the watery world 
around. 

I recollect also that, after toiling and watching and 
creeping about for the greater part of a day, with 
scarcely any success, in spite of all our admirable 
apparatus, a lubberly country urchin came down from 
the hills, with a rod made from a branch of a tree, a 
few yards of twine, and, as heaven shall help me! 
I believe a crooked pin for a hook, baited with a vile 
earthworm, — and in half an hour caught more fish 
than we had nibbles throughout the day ! 

But above all, I recollect the "good, honest, whole- 
some, hungry " repast, which we made under a beech - 
tree just by a spring of pure sweet water that stole out 
of the side of a hill; and how, when it was over, one 
of the party read old Izaak Walton's scene with the 
milk -maid, while I lay on the grass and built castles 
in a bright pile of clouds, until I fell asleep. All this 
may appear like mere egotism; yet I cannot refrain 
from uttering these recollections, which are passing 
like a strain of music over my mind, and have been 
called up by an agreeable scene which I witnessed 
not long since. 

In a morning's stroll along the banks of the Alun, 
a beautiful little stream which flows down from the 
Welsh hills and throws itself into the Dee, my atten- 
tion was attracted to a group seated on the margin. 
On approaching, I found it to consist of a veteran 
angler and two rustic disciples. The former was an 
old fellow with a wooden leg, with clothes very much 
but very carefully patched, betokening poverty, hon- 
estly come by, and decently maintained. His face 



THE ANGLER. 33 

bore the marks of former storms, but present fair 
weather; its furrows had been worn into an habitual 
smile; his iron-gray locks hung about his ears, and 
he had altogether the good-humored air of a constitu- 
tional philosopher who was disposed to take the world 
as it went. One of his companions was a ragged 
wight, with the skulking look of an arrant poacher, 
and I '11 warrant could find his way to any gentle- 
man's fish-pond in the neighborhood in the darkest 
night. The other was a tall, awkward, country lad, 
with a lounging gait, and apparently somewhat of a 
rustic beau. The old man was busy in examining the 
maw of a trout which he had just killed, to discover 
by its contents what insects were seasonable for bait; 
and was lecturing on the subject to his companions, 
who appeared to listen with infinite deference. I 
have a kind feeling towards all "brothers of the 
angle," ever since I read Izaak Walton. They are 
men, he affirms, of a "mild, sweet, and peaceable 
spirit; " and my esteem for them has been increased 
since I met with an old "Tretyse of fishing with the 
Angle," in which are set forth many of the maxims of 
their inoffensive fraternity. "Take good hede," say- 
eth this honest little tretyse, "that in going about 
your disportes ye open no man's gates but that ye 
shet them again. Also ye shall not use this for say d 
crafti disport for no covetousness to the encreasing 
and sparing of your money only, but j)rineipally for 
your solace, and to cause the helth of your body and 
specyally of your soule." 1 

1 From this same treatise, it would appear that angling is a 
more industrious and devout employment than it is generally 
considered. " For when ye purpose to go on your disportes in 
fishynge, ye will not desyre greatlye many persons with you, 



34 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

I thought that I could perceive in the veteran angler 
before me an exemplification of what I had read ; and 
there was a cheerful contentedness in his looks, that 
quite drew me towards him. I could not but remark 
the gallant manner in which he stumped from one 
part of the brook to another; waving his rod in the 
air, to keep the line from dragging on the ground 
or catching among the bushes ; and the adroitness with 
which he would throw his fly to any particular place ; 
sometimes skimming it lightly along a little rapid; 
sometimes casting it into one of those dark holes 
made by a twisted root or overhanging bank, in which 
the large trout are apt to lurk. In the meanwhile he 
was giving instructions to his two disciples ; showing 
them the manner in which they should handle their 
rods, fix their flies, and play them along the surface 
of the stream. The scene brought to my mind the 
instructions of the sage Piscator to his scholar. The 
country around was of that pastoral kind which Wal- 
ton is fond of describing. It was a part of the great 
plain of Cheshire, close by the beautiful vale of Gess- 
ford, and just where the inferior Welsh hills begin to 
swell up from among fresh-smelling meadows. The 
day, too, like that recorded in his work, was mild and 
sunshiny, with now and then a soft-dropping shower, 
that sowed the whole earth with diamonds. 

I soon fell into conversation with the old angler, 
and was so much entertained that, under pretext of 
receiving instructions in his art, I kept company with 

which might let you of your game. And that ye may serve 
God devoutly in sayinge effectually your customable prayers. 
And thus doying, ye shall eschew and also avoyde many vices, 
as ydelnes which is principall cause to induce man to many other 
vices, as it is right well known." — W. I. 



THE ANGLER. 35 

him almost the whole day ; wandering along the banks 
of the stream, and listening to his talk. He was very 
communicative, having all the easy garrulity of cheer- 
ful old age ; and I fancy was a little flattered by hav- 
ing an opportunity of displaying his piscatory lore ; for 
who does not like now and then to play the sage ? 

He had been much of a rambler in his day; and 
had passed some years of his youth in America, par- 
ticularly in Savannah, where he had entered into trade 
and had been ruined by the indiscretion of a partner. 
He had afterwards experienced many ups and downs 
in life, until he got into the navy, where his leg was 
carried away by a cannon-ball, at the battle of Cam- 
perdown. 1 This was the only stroke of real good for- 
tune he had ever experienced, for it got him a pension, 
which, together with some small paternal property, 
brought him in a revenue of nearly forty pounds. On 
this he retired to his native village, where he lived 
quietly and independently, and devoted the remainder 
of his life to the "noble art of angling." 

I found that he had read Izaak Walton attentively, 
and he seemed to have imbibed all his simple frank- 
ness and prevalent good-humor. Though he had been 
sorely buffeted about the world, he was satisfied that 
the world, in itself, was good and beautiful. Though 
he had been as roughly used in different countries as 
a poor sheep that is fleeced by every hedge and thicket, 
yet he spoke of every nation with candor and kind- 
ness, appearing to look only on the good side of things ; 
and above all, he was almost the only man I had ever 

1 Camperdown is a village of Holland, twenty-seven miles 
northwest of Amsterdam, celebrated on account of the victory 
gained off its coast by the English Admiral Duncan over the 
Dutch fleet under Admiral De Winter, October 11, 1797. 



36 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

met with, who had been an unfortunate adventurer in 
America, and had honesty and magnanimity enough 
to take the fault to his own door, and not to curse 
the country. 

The lad that was receiving his instructions, I learnt, 
was the son and heir apparent of a fat old widow who 
kept the village inn, and of course a youth of some 
expectation, and much courted by the idle, gentleman- 
like personages of the place. In taking him under his 
care, therefore, the old man had probably an eye to a 
privileged corner in the tap-room, and an occasional 
cup of cheerful ale free of expense. 

There is certainly something in angling, if we could 
forget, which anglers are apt to do, the cruelties and 
tortures inflicted on worms and insects, that tends to 
produce a gentleness of spirit, and a pure serenity of 
mind. As the English are methodical even in their 
recreations, and are the most scientific of sportsmen, it 
has been reduced among them to perfect rule and sys- 
tem. Indeed, it is an amusement peculiarly adapted 
to the mild and highly cultivated scenery of England, 
where every roughness has been softened away from 
the landscape. It is delightful to saunter along those 
limpid streams which wander, like veins of silver, 
through the bosom of this beautif id country ; leading 
one through a diversity of small home scenery; some- 
times winding through ornamented grounds ; sometimes 
brimming along through rich pasturage, where the 
fresh green is mingled with sweet-smelling flowers; 
sometimes venturing in sight of villages and hamlets, 
and then running capriciously away into shady retire- 
ments. The sweetness and serenity of nature, and 
the quiet watchfulness of the sport, gradually bring 
on pleasant fits of musing; which are now and then 



THE ANGLER. 37 

agreeably interrupted by the song of a bird, the dis- 
tant whistle of the peasant, or perhaps the vagary of 
some fish, leaping out of the still water and skimming 
transiently about its glassy surface. " When I would 
beget content," says Izaak Walton, "and increase 
confidence in the power and wisdom and providence of 
Almighty God, I will walk the meadows by some 
gliding stream, and there contemplate the lilies that 
take no care, and those very many other little living 
creatures that are not only created but fed, (man 
knows not how) by the goodness of the God of na- 
ture, and therefore trust in him." 

I cannot forbear to give another quotation from one 
of those ancient champions of angling, which breathes 
the same innocent and happy spirit : 

Let me live harmlessly, and near the brink 

Of Trent or Avon have a dwelling-place, 
Where I may see my quill, or cork, down sink, 

With eager bite of pike, or bleak, or dace; 
And on the world and my Creator think : 

Whilst some men strive ill-gotten goods t' embrace : 
And others spend their time in base excess 

Of wine, or, worse, in war or wantonness. 
Let them that will, these pastimes still pursue, 

And on such pleasing fancies feed their fill ; 
So I the fields and meadows green may view, 

And daily by fresh rivers walk at will, 
Among the daisies and the violets blue, 

Red hyacinth and yellow daffodil. 1 

On parting with the old angler I inquired after his 
place of abode, and happening to be in the neighbor- 
hood of the village a few evenings afterwards, I had 
the curiosity to seek him out. I found him living in 
a small cottage, containing only one room, but a per- 
1 J. Davors. 



38 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

feet curiosity in its method and arrangement. It was 
on the skirts of the village, on a green bank, a little 
back from the road, with a small garden in front, 
stocked with kitchen herbs, and adorned with a few 
flowers. The whole front of the cottage was overrun 
with a honeysuckle. On the top was a ship for a 
weathercock. The interior was fitted up in a truly 
nautical style, his ideas of comfort and convenience 
having been acquired on the berth-deck of a man-of- 
war. A hammock was slung from the ceiling, which 
in the daytime was lashed up so as to take but little 
room. From the centre of the chamber hung a model 
of a ship, of his own workmanship. Two or three 
chairs, a table, and a large sea-chest, formed the prin- 
cipal movables. About the wall were stuck up naval 
ballads, such as Admiral Hosier's Ghost, 1 All in the 
Downs, 2 and Tom Bowling, 3 intermingled with pic- 
tures of sea-fights, among which the battle of Camper- 
down held a distinguished place. The mantel-piece 

1 Tbis ballad, written by Richard Glover in 1739, is based on 
an English expedition of twenty sail to block up the galleons of 
the Spanish West Indies, but with strict orders not to fight. The 
men died of disease and the admiral of a broken heart. After 
Admiral Vernon's victory over the same foe, Admiral Hosier 
and three thousand men are represented as rising " all in dreary 
hammocks shrouded, which for winding-sheets they wore," and 
lamenting the cruel orders that forbade their attacking with 
twenty ships when Vernon succeeded with six. 

2 " All in the Downs the fleet was moored," — the first line of 
the ballad, by John Gay, popularly known as Black-eyed Susan. 
It was published in 1720. 

3 A naval character in Smollett's Roderick Random, in whose 
memory Charles Dibdin wrote one of his famous sea-songs be- 
ginning thus : — 

Here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowling, 
The darling of his crew. 



THE ANGLER. 39 

was decorated with seashells ; over which hung a quad- 
rant, flanked by two wood-cuts of most bitter-looking 
naval commanders. His implements for angling were 
carefully disposed on nails and hooks about the room. 
On a shelf was arranged his library, containing a work 
on angling, much worn; a Bible covered with canvas; 
an odd volume or two of voyages ; a nautical almanac ; 
and a book of songs. 

His family consisted of a large black cat with one 
eye, and a parrot which he had caught and tamed, and 
educated himself, in the course of one of his voyages ; 
and which uttered a variety of sea phrases, with the 
hoarse rattling tone of a veteran boatswain. The 
establishment reminded me of that of the renowned 
Robinson Crusoe; it was kept in neat order, every- 
thing being "stowed away" with the regularity of a 
ship of war; and he informed me that he "scoured 
the deck every morning, and swept it between meals." 

I found him seated on a bench before the door, 
smoking his pipe in the soft evening sunshine. His 
cat was purring soberly on the threshold, and his 
parrot describing some strange evolutions in an iron 
ring that swung in the centre of his cage. He had 
been angling all day, and gave me a history of his 
sport with as much minuteness as a general would 
talk over a campaign ; being particularly animated in 
relating the manner in which he had taken a large 
trout, which had completely tasked all his skill and 
wariness, and which he had sent as a trophy to mine 
hostess of the inn. 

How comforting it is to see a cheerful and contented 
old age ; and to behold a poor fellow, like this, after 
being tempest-tost through life, safely moored in a 
snug and quiet harbor in the evening of his days! 



40 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

His happiness, however, sprung from within himself, 
and was independent of external circumstances; for 
he had that inexhaustible good nature, which is the 
most precious gift of Heaven; spreading itself like oil 
over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the 
mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather. 

On inquiring further about him, I learnt that he 
was a universal favorite in the village, and the oracle of 
the tap-room; where he delighted the rustics with his 
songs, and, like Sinbad, astonished them with his sto- 
ries of strange lands, and shipwrecks, and sea-fights. 
He was much noticed too by gentlemen sportsmen 
of the neighborhood; had taught several of them the 
art of angling; and was a privileged visitor to their 
kitchens. The whole tenor of his life was quiet and 
inoffensive, being principally passed about the neigh- 
boring streams, when the weather and season were 
favorable; and at other times he employed himself at 
home, preparing his fishing tackle for the next cam- 
paign, or manufacturing rods, nets, and flies, for his 
patrons and pupils among the gentry. 

He was a regular attendant at church on Sundays, 
though he generally fell asleep during the sermon. 
He had made it his particular request that when he 
died he should be buried in a green spot, which he 
could see from his seat in church, and which he had 
marked out ever since he was a boy, and had thought 
of when far from home on the raging sea, in danger 
of being food for the fishes — it was the spot where his 
father and mother had been buried. 

I have done, for I fear that my reader is growing 
weary ; but I could not refrain from drawing the pic- 
ture of this worthy "brother of the angle; " who has 
made me more than ever in love with the theory, 



THE STAGE-COACH. 41 

though I fear I shall never be adroit in the practice of 
his art; and I will conclude this rambling sketch, in 
the words of honest Izaak Walton, by craving the 
blessing of St. Peter's master upon my reader, "and 
upon all that are true lovers of virtue ; and dare trust 
in his providence; and be quiet; and go a angling." 



THE STAGE-COACH. 

Omne bene" 

Sine poenai 
Tempus est ludendi. 

Venit hora 

Absque mora 
Libros deponendi. 

Old Holiday School Song. 1 

In the preceding paper 2 I have made some general 
observations on the Christmas festivities of England, 
and am tempted to illustrate them by some anecdotes 
of a Christmas passed in the country; in perusing 
which, I would most courteously invite my reader to 
lay aside the austerity of wisdom, and to put on that 
genuine holiday spirit which is tolerant of folly and 
anxious only for amusement. 

In the course of a December tour in Yorkshire, I 
rode for a long distance in one of the public coaches, 
on the day preceding Christmas. The coach was 
crowded, both inside and out, with passengers, who, 

1 The stanza signifies that it is well there is a time for mak- 
ing merry that brings no punishment, and that the hour is at 
hand for promptly putting aside one's books. 

2 Omitted from this book. The Sketch-Book has four papers 
on Christmas, entitled Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day 
(see page 50), and Christmas Dinner respectively. 



42 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

by their talk, seemed principally bound to the man- 
sions of relations or friends, to eat the Christmas din- 
ner. It was loaded also with hampers of game, and 
baskets and boxes of delicacies ; and hares hung dan- 
gling their long ears about the coachman's box, pres- 
ents from distant friends for the impending feast. I 
had three fine rosy-cheeked school-boys for my fellow 
passengers inside, full of the buxom health and manly 
spirit which I have observed in the children of this 
country. They were returning home for the holidays, 
in high glee, and promising themselves a world of 
enjoyment. It was delightful to hear the gigantic 
plans of the little rogues, and the impracticable feats 
they were to perform during their six weeks' emanci- 
pation from the abhorred thraldom of book, birch, and 
pedagogue. They were full of the anticipations of the 
meeting with the family and household, down to the 
very cat and dog; and of the joy they were to give 
their little sisters, by the presents with which their 
pockets were crammed ; but the meeting to which they 
seemed to look forward with the greatest impatience 
was with Bantam, which I found to be a pony, and, 
according to their talk, possessed of more virtues than 
any steed since the days of Bucephalus. 1 How he 
could trot ! how he could run ! and then such leaps as 
he would take — there was not a hedge in the whole 
country that he could not clear. 

They were under the particular guardianship of the 
coachman, to whom, whenever an opportunity pre- 
sented, they addressed a host of questions, and pro- 

1 The favorite charger of Alexander the Great. Tradition 
tells how Alexander, in his boyhood, tamed Bucephalus, thus 
fulfilling the condition stated by an oracle as necessary for ob- 
taining the throne of Macedon. 



THE STAGE-COACH. 43 

nounced him one of the best fellows in the world. 
Indeed, I could not but notice the more than ordinary- 
air of bustle and importance of the coachman, who 
wore his hat a little on one side, and had a large 
bunch of Christmas greens stuck in the button-hole of 
his coat. He is always a personage full of mighty 
care and business, but he is particularly so during this 
season, having so many commissions to execute in con- 
sequence of the great interchange of presents. And 
here, perhaps, it may not be unacceptable to my un- 
travelled readers, to have a sketch that may serve as 
a general representation of this very numerous and 
important class of functionaries, who have a dress, a 
manner, a language, an air, peculiar to themselves, 
and prevalent throughout the fraternity; so that, 
wherever an English stage-coachman may be seen, he 
cannot be mistaken for one of any other craft or mys- 
tery. 

He has commonly a broad, full face, curiously mot- 
tled with red, as if the blood had been forced by hard 
feeding into every vessel of the skin ; he is swelled into 
jolly dimensions by frequent potations of malt liquors, 
and his bulk is still further increased by a multiplicity 
of coats, in which he is buried like a cauliflower, the 
upper one reaching to his heels. He wears a broad- 
brimmed, low-crowned hat; a huge roll of colored 
handkerchief about his neck, knowingly knotted and 
tucked in at the bosom ; and has in summer time a 
large bouquet of flowers in his button-hole, the pres- 
ent, most probably, of some enamored country lass. 
His waistcoat is commonly of some bright color, 
striped, and his small-clothes extend far below the 
knees, to meet a pair of jockey boots which reach 
about half way up his legs. 



44 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

All this costume is maintained with much precision ; 
he has a pride in having his clothes of excellent ma- 
terials, and, notwithstanding the seeming grossness of 
his appearance, there is still discernible that neatness 
and propriet}^ of person, which is almost inherent in 
an Englishman. He enjoys great consequence and 
consideration along the road ; has frequent conferences 
with the village housewives, who look upon him as a 
man of great trust and dependence; and he seems to 
have a good understanding with every bright-eyed 
country lass. The moment he arrives where the 
horses are to be changed, he throws down the reins 
with something of an air, and abandons the cattle to 
the care of the hostler ; his duty being merely to drive 
from one stage to another. When off the box, his 
hands are thrust into the pockets of his great coat, and 
he rolls about the inn yard with an air of the most 
absolute lordliness. Here he is generally surrounded 
by an admiring throng of hostlers, stable-boys, shoe- 
blacks, and those nameless hangers-on that infest inns 
and taverns and run errands, and do all kind of odd 
jobs for the privilege of battening on the drippings of 
the kitchen and the leakage of the tap-room. These all 
look up to him as to an oracle ; treasure up his cant 
phrases ; echo his opinions about horses and other top- 
ics of jockey lore ; and, above all, endeavor to imitate 
his air and carriage. Every ragamuffin that has a 
coat to his back, thrusts his hands in the pockets, 
rolls in his gait, talks slang, and is an embryo 
Coachey. 

Perhaps it might be owing to the pleasing serenity 
that reigned in my own mind, that I fancied I saw 
cheerfulness in every countenance throughout the 
journey. A stage-coach, however, carries animation 



THE STAGE-COACH. 45 

always with it, and puts the world in motion as it 
whirls along. The horn, sounded at the entrance of 
a village, produces a general bustle. Some hasten 
forth to meet friends; some with bundles and band- 
boxes to secure places, and in the hurry of the moment 
can hardly take leave of the group that accompanies 
them. In the mean time, the coachman has a world 
of small commissions to execute. Sometimes he deliv- 
ers a hare or pheasant; sometimes jerks a small parcel 
or newspaper to the door of a public house ; and some- 
times, with knowing leer and words of sly import, 
hands to some half -blushing, half -laughing housemaid 
an odd-shaped billet-doux from some rustic admirer. 
As the coach rattles through the village, every one 
runs to the window, and you have glances on every 
side of fresh country faces and blooming, giggling 
girls. At the corners are assembled juntos of village 
idlers and wise men, who take their stations there for 
the important purpose of seeing company pass; but 
the sagest knot is generally at the blacksmith's, to 
whom the passing of the coach is an event fruitful of 
much speculation. The smith, with the horse's heel 
in his lap, pauses as the vehicle whirls by ; the cyclops 1 
round the anvil suspend their ringing hammers, and 
suffer the iron to grow cool; and the sooty spectre in 
brown paper cap, laboring at the bellows, leans on the 
handle for a moment, and permits the asthmatic engine 
to heave a long-drawn sigh, while he glares through 
the murky smoke and sulphureous gleams of the 
smithy. 

1 The word has the same form in the singular and the plural. 
The Cyclops, a mythical race of giants with but one eye, in the 
middle of the forehead, were said to assist Vulcan in his work- 
shops under Mount Etna. 



46 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

Perhaps the impending holiday might have given 
a more than usual animation to the country, for it 
seemed to me as if everybody was in good looks and 
good spirits. Game, poultry, and other luxuries of 
the table were in brisk circulation in the villages; 
the grocers', butchers', and fruiterers' shops were 
thronged with customers. The housewives were stir- 
ring briskly about, putting their dwellings in order; 
and the glossy branches of holly, with their bright 
red berries, began to appear at the windows. The 
scene brought to mind an old writer's account of 
Christmas preparations: "Now capons and hens, 
besides turkeys, geese, and ducks, with beef and mutton 
— must all die — for in twelve days * a multitude of 
people will not be fed with a little. Now plums and 
spice, sugar and honey, square it among pies and 
broth. Now or never must music be in tune, for the 
youth must dance and sing to get them a heat, while 
the aged sit by the fire. The country maid leaves 
half her market, and must be sent again, if she forgets 
a pack of cards on Christmas eve. Great is the con- 
tention of holly and ivy, whether master or dame wears 
the breeches. Dice and cards benefit the butler ; and 
if the cook do not lack wit, he will sweetly lick his 
fingers." 

I was roused from this fit of luxurious meditation 
by a shout from my little travelling companions. 
They had been looking out of the coach windows for 
the last few miles, recognizing every tree and cot- 
tage as they approached home, and now there was a 
general burst of joy. "There 's John! and there 's 

1 Christmas festivities in the past were usually celebrated 
with great spirit for twelve days, or until Twelfth Night (Jan- 
uary 6), and sometimes lasted until Candlemas (February 2). 



THE STAGE-COACH. 47 

old Carlo! and there's Bantam!" cried the happy- 
little rogues, clapping their hands. 

At the end of a lane there was an old, sober-looking 
servant in livery, waiting for them ; he was accompa- 
nied by a superannuated pointer, and by the redoubt- 
able Bantam, a little old rat of a pony, with a shaggy 
mane and long rusty tail, who stood dozing quietly by 
the road-side, little dreaming of the bustling times 
that awaited him. 

I was pleased to see the fondness with which the 
little fellows leaped about the steady old footman, and 
hugged the pointer, who wriggled his whole body for 
joy. But Bantam was the great object of interest; all 
wanted to mount at once, and it was with some diffi- 
culty that John arranged that they should ride by 
turns, and the eldest should ride first. 

Off they set at last ; one on the pony, with the dog 
bounding and barking before him, and the others hold- 
ing John's hands; both talking at once, and overpow- 
ering him with questions about home and with school 
anecdotes. I looked after them with a feeling in which 
I do not know whether pleasure or melancholy pre- 
dominated; for I was reminded of those days when, 
like them, I had neither known care nor sorrow, and 
a holiday was the summit of earthly felicity. We 
stopped a few moments afterwards, to water the 
horses ; and on resuming our route, a turn of the road 
brought us in sight of a neat country seat. I could 
just distinguish the forms of a lady and two young 
girls in the portico, and I saw my little comrades, 
with Bantam, Carlo, and old John, trooping along 
the carriage road. I leaned out of the coach window, 
in hopes of witnessing the happy meeting, but a grove 
of trees shut it from my sight. 



48 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

In the evening we reached a village where I had 
determined to pass the night. As we drove into the 
great gateway of the inn, I saw on one side the light 
of a rousing kitchen fire beaming through a window. 
I entered, and admired, for the hundredth time, that 
picture of convenience, neatness, and broad honest 
enjoyment, the kitchen of an English inn. It was of 
spacious dimensions, hung round with copper and tin 
vessels highly polished, and decorated here and there 
with a Christmas green. Hams, tongues, and flitches 
of bacon were suspended from the ceiling ; a smoke- 
jack * made its ceaseless clanking beside the fire-place, 
and a clock ticked in one corner. A well-scoured 
deal table extended along one side of the kitchen, 
with a cold round of beef, and other hearty viands, 
upon it, over which two foaming tankards of ale seemed 
mounting guard. Travellers of inferior order were 
preparing to attack this stout repast, whilst others sat 
smoking and gossiping over their ale on two high- 
backed oaken settles beside the fire. Trim house- 
maids were hurrying backwards and forwards, under 
the directions of a fresh, bustling landlady ; but still 
seizing an occasional moment to exchange a flippant 
word, and have a rallying laugh, with the group round 
the fire. The scene completely realized Poor Robin's 2 
humble idea of the comforts of mid-winter : 

Now trees their leafy hats do bare 
To reverence Winter's silver hair ; 

1 A kind of circular wheel or fan, horizontally placed, that 
was made to revolve by the upward current in the chimney. It 
turned a spit. 

2 Poor Robin was a pseudonym of the poet, Robert Herrick, 
under which he issued a series of almanacs that was begun in 
1661. The passage quoted is from the number for 1694. 



THE STAGE-COACH. 49 

A handsome hostess, merry host, 
A pot of ale now and a toast, 
Tobacco and a good coal fire, 
Are things this season doth require. 

I had not been long at the inn when a post-chaise 
drove up to the door. A young gentleman stepped out, 
and by the light of the lamps I caught a glimpse of 
a countenance which I thought I knew. I moved for- 
ward to get a nearer view, when his eye caught mine. 
I was not mistaken; it was Frank Bracebridge, a 
sprightly, good-humored young fellow, with whom I 
had once travelled on the continent. Our meeting 
was extremely cordial, for the countenance of an old 
fellow-traveller always brings up the recollection of a 
thousand pleasant scenes, odd adventures, and excel- 
lent jokes. To discuss all these in a transient inter- 
view at an inn was impossible ; and finding that I was 
not pressed for time, and was merely making a tour 
of observation, he insisted that I should give him a 
day or two at his father's country seat, to which he 
was going to pass the holidays, and which lay at a 
few miles' distance. "It is better than eating a soli- 
tary Christmas dinner at an inn," said he, "and I can 
assure you of a hearty welcome, in something of the 
old-fashioned style." His reasoning was cogent, and 
I must confess the preparation I had seen for universal 
festivity and social enjoyment had made me feel a little 
impatient of my loneliness. I closed, therefore, at 
once, with his invitation ; the chaise drove up to the 
door, and in a few moments I was on my way to the 
family mansion of the Bracebridges. 



50 WASHINGTON IRVING. 



CHRISTMAS DAY. 

Dark and dull night, flie hence away, 
And give the honor to this day 
That sees December turn'd to May. 

Why does the chilling winter's morne 
Smile like a field beset with come ? 
Or smell like to a rneade new-shorne, 
Thus on the sudden ? Come and see 
The cause why things thus fragrant be. 

Hehbick. 

When I woke the next morning, 1 it seemed as if all 
the events of the preceding evening had been a dream, 
and nothing but the identity of the ancient chamber 
convinced me of their reality. While I lay musing on 
my pillow, I heard the sound of little feet pattering 
outside of the door, and a whispering consultation. 
Presently a choir of small voices chanted forth an old 
Christmas carol, the burden of which was — 

Rejoice, our Saviour he was born 
On Christmas day in the morning. 

I rose softly, slipt on my clothes, opened the door 
suddenly, and beheld one of the most beautiful little 
fairy groups that a painter could imagine. It con- 
sisted of a boy and two girls, the eldest not more than 
six, and lovely as seraphs. They were going the 
rounds of the house, and singing at every chamber 
door, but my sudden appearance frightened them into 
mute bashfulness. They remained for a moment play- 
ing on their lips with their fingers, and now and then 
stealing a shy glance from under their eyebrows, until, 
as if by one impulse, they scampered away, and as 

1 Geoffrey Crayon, Gentlemau, spent his Christmas Eve at 
Bracebridge Hall. The account which he gives of the festivities 
on that occasion is omitted from this book. 



CHRISTMAS DAY. 51 

they turned an angle of the gallery, I heard them 
laughing in triumph at their escape. 

Everything conspired to produce kind and happy 
feelings, in this stronghold of old-fashioned hospital- 
ity. The window of my chamber looked out upon 
what in summer would have been a beautiful land- 
scape. There was a sloping lawn, a fine stream wind- 
ing at the foot of it, and a tract of park beyond, with 
noble clumps of trees, and herds of deer. At a dis- 
tance was a neat hamlet, with the smoke from the cot- 
tage chimneys hanging over it ; and a church, with its 
dark spire in strong relief against the clear cold sky. 
The house was surrounded with evergreens, according 
to the English custom, which would have given 
almost an appearance of summer; but the morning 
was extremely frosty; the light vapor of the preced- 
ing evening had been precipitated by the cold, and 
covered all the trees and every blade of grass with its 
line crystallizations. The rays of a bright morning 
sun had a dazzling effect among the glittering foliage. 
A robin, perched upon the top of a mountain ash that 
hung its clusters of red berries just before my window, 
was basking himself in the sunshine, and piping a few 
querulous notes ; and a peacock was displaying all the 
glories of his train, and strutting with the pride and 
gravity of a Spanish grandee, on the terrace walk 
below. 

I had scarcely dressed myself, when a servant 
appeared to invite me to family prayers. He showed 
me the way to a small chapel in the old wing of the 
house, where I found the principal part of the family 
already assembled in a kind of gallery, furnished with 
cushions, hassocks, and large prayer-books; the ser- 
vants were seated on benches below. The old gentle- 



52 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

man read prayers from a desk in front of the gallery, 
and Master Simon acted as clerk and made the 
responses; and I must do him the justice to say, that 
he acquitted himself with great gravity and decorum. 
The service was followed by a Christmas carol, 
which Mr. Bracebridge himself had constructed from 
a poem of his favorite author, Herrick ; and it had 
been adapted to an old church melody by Master 
Simon. As there were several good voices among the 
household, the effect was extremely pleasing; but I 
was particularly gratified by the exaltation of heart, 
and sudden sally of grateful feeling, with which the 
worthy squire delivered one stanza ; his eye glistening, 
and his voice rambling out of all the bounds of time 
and tune: 

" 'T is thou that crown' st my glittering hearth 
With guiltlesse mirth, 
And giv'st me wassaile 1 bowles to drink, 
Spiced to the brink. 

Lord, 't is thy plenty- dropping hand 

That soiles my land, 
And giv'st me, for my bushell sowne, 

Twice ten for one." 

I afterwards understood that early morning service 
was read on every Sunday and saint's day throughout 
the year, either by Mr. Bracebridge or by some mem- 
ber of the family. It was once almost universally the 
case at the seats of the nobility and gentry of Eng- 
land, and it is much to be regretted that the custom is 
falling into neglect ; for the dullest observer must be 

1 From the Anglo-Saxon, meaning Be in health. Hence it 
means the liquor with which one's health is drunk, — a kind of 
ale or wine flavored with nutmeg, sugar, toast, ginger, roasted 
apples, etc., and much used at Christmas and other festivities. 



CHRISTMAS DAY. 53 

sensible of the order and serenity prevalent in those 
households where the occasional exercise of a beautiful 
form of worship in the morning gives, as it were, the 
key-note to every temper for the day, and attunes every 
spirit to harmony. 

Our breakfast consisted of what the squire denomi- 
nated true old English fare. He indulged in some 
bitter lamentations over modern breakfasts of tea and 
toast, which he censured as among the causes of mod- 
ern effeminacy and weak nerves, and the decline of 
old English heartiness ; and though he admitted them 
to his table to suit the palates of his guests, yet there 
was a brave display of cold meats, wine, and ale, on 
the sideboard. 

After breakfast, I walked about the grounds with 
Frank Bracebridge and Master Simon, or Mr. Simon, 
as he was called by everybody but the squire. We 
were escorted by a number of gentlemanlike dogs, 
that seemed loungers about the establishment; from 
the frisking spaniel to the steady old stag-hound — 
the last of which was of a race that had been in the 
family time out of mind — they were all obedient to a 
dog-whistle which hung to Master Simon's button- 
hole, and in the midst of their gambols would glance 
an eye occasionally upon a small switch he carried in 
his hand. 

The old mansion had a still more venerable look in 
the yellow sunshine than by pale moonlight; and I 
could not but feel the force of the squire's idea, that 
the formal terraces, heavily moulded balustrades, and 
clipped yew-trees, carried with them an air of proud 
aristocracy. 

There appeared to be an unusual number of pea- 
cocks about the place, and I was making some remarks 



54 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

upon what I termed a flock of them, that were bask- 
ing under a sunny wall, when I was gently corrected 
in my phraseology by Master Simon, who told me 
that, according to the most ancient and approved trea- 
tise on hunting, I must say a ?nuster of peacocks. "In 
the same way," added he, with a slight air of pedantry, 
"we say a flight of doves or swallows, a bevy of quails, 
a herd of deer, of wrens, or cranes, a skulk of foxes, 
or a building of rooks." He went on to inform me 
that, according to Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, we ought 
to ascribe to this bird " both understanding and glory ; 
for, being praised, he will presently set up his tail, 
chiefly against the sun, to the intent you may the 
better behold the beauty thereof. But at the fall of 
the leaf, when his tail falleth, he will mourn and hide 
himself in corners, till his tail come again as it was." 

I could not help smiling at this display of small 
erudition on so whimsical a subject; but I found that 
the peacocks were birds of some consequence at the 
hall; for Frank Bracebridge informed me that they 
were great favorites with his father, who was extremely 
careful to keep up the breed, partly because they 
belonged to chivalry, and were in great request at the 
stately banquets of the olden time ; and partly because 
they had a pomp and magnificence about them, highly 
becoming an old family mansion. Nothing, he was 
accustomed to say, had an air of greater state and dig- 
nity than a peacock perched upon an antique stone 
balustrade. 

Master Simon had now to hurry off, having an 
appointment at the parish church with the village 
choristers, who were to perform some music of his 
selection. There was something extremely agreeable 
in the cheerful flow of animal spirits of the little 



CHRISTMAS DAY. 55 

man ; and I confess I had been somewhat surprised at 
his apt quotations from authors who certainly were 
not in the range of every-day reading. I mentioned 
this last circumstance to Frank Bracebridge, who told 
me with a smile that Master Simon's whole stock of 
erudition was confined to some half a dozen old au- 
thors, which the squire had put into his hands, and 
which he read over and over, whenever he had a stu- 
dious fit; as he sometimes had on a rainy day, or 
a long winter evening. Sir Anthony Fitzherbert's 
Book of Husbandry; Markham's Country Content- 
ments ; the Tretyse of Hunting, by Sir Thomas Cock- 
ayne, Knight; Izaak Walton's Angler, and two or 
three more such ancient worthies of the pen, were his 
standard authorities; and, like all men who know 
but a few books, he looked up to them with a kind of 
idolatry, and quoted them on all occasions. As to his 
songs, they were chiefly picked out of old books in the 
squire's library, and adapted to tunes that were popu- 
lar among the choice spirits of the last century. His 
practical application of scraps of literature, however, 
had caused him to be looked upon as a prodigy of 
book -knowledge by all the grooms, huntsmen, and 
small sportsmen of the neighborhood. 

While we were talking, we heard the distant toll of 
the village bell, and I was told that the squire was a 
little particular in having his household at church on 
a Christmas morning ; considering it a day of pouring 
out of thanks and rejoicing; for, as old Tusser ob- 
served, — 

" At Christmas be merry, and thankful withal, 
And feast thy poor neighbors, the great with the small." 

"If you are disposed to go to church," said Frank 
Bracebridge, "I can promise you a specimen of my 



58 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

cousin Simon's musical achievements. As the church 
is destitute of an organ, he has formed a band from 
the village amateurs, and established a musical club 
for their improvement ; he has also sorted a choir, as 
he sorted my father's pack of hounds, according to 
the directions of Jervaise Markham, in his Country 
Contentments ; for the bass he has sought out all the 
'deep, solemn mouths,' and for the tenor the 'loud- 
ringing mouths, ' among the country bumpkins ; and 
for 'sweet mouths' he has culled with curious taste 
among the prettiest lassies in the neighborhood; 
though these last, he affirms, are the most difficult 
to keep in tune ; your pretty female singer being ex- 
ceedingly wayward and capricious, and very liable to 
accident." 

As the morning, though frosty, was remarkably 
fine and clear, the most of the family walked to the 
church, which was a very old building of gray stone, 
and stood near a village, about half a mile from the 
park gate. Adjoining it was a low snug parsonage, 
which seemed coeval with the church. The front of 
it was perfectly matted with a yew-tree, that had been 
trained against its walls, through the dense foliage of 
which, apertures had been formed to admit light into 
the small antique lattices. As we passed this shel- 
tered nest, the parson issued forth and preceded us. 

I had expected to see a sleek well-conditioned pastor, 
such as is often found in a snug living in the vicinity 
of a rich patron's table, but I was disappointed. The 
parson was a little, meagre, black-looking man, with a 
grizzled wig that was too wide, and stood off from 
each ear; so that his head seemed to have shrunk 
away within it, like a dried filbert in its shell. He 
wore a rusty coat, with great skirts, and pockets that 



CHRISTMAS DAY. 57 

would have held the church Bible and prayer-book: 
and his small legs seemed still smaller, from being 
planted in large shoes, decorated with enormous 
buckles. 

I was informed by Frank Bracebridge that the par- 
son had been a chum of his father's at Oxford, and 
had received this living shortly after the latter had 
come to his estate. He was a complete black-letter 
hunter, 1 and would scarcely read a work printed in 
the Roman character. The editions of Caxton and 
Wynkin de Worde were his delight ; and he was inde- 
fatigable in his researches after such old English writ- 
ers as have fallen into oblivion from their worthless- 
ness. In deference, perhaps, to the notions of Mr. 
Bracebridge, he had made diligent investigations into 
the festive rites and holiday customs of former times ; 
and had been as zealous in the inquiry, as if he had 
been a boon companion ; but it was merely with that 
plodding spirit with which men of adust 2 temperament 
follow up any track of study, merely because it is de- 
nominated learning ; indifferent to its intrinsic nature, 
whether it be the illustration of the wisdom, or of the 
ribaldry and obscenity of antiquity. He had pored 
over these old volumes so intensely, that they seemed 
to have been reflected into his countenance ; which, if 
the face be indeed an index of the mind, might be 
compared to a title-page of black-letter. 

On reaching the church porch, we found the parson 
rebuking the gray -headed sexton for having used mis- 

1 That is, a person fond of collecting those earliest of English 
works that were printed in black-letter (3SIarft=3L£ttcr). Such works 
belong to the fourteenth century. 

2 From the Latin adustus, inflamed or scorched. It is used, 
here in the decaying sense of gloomy or melancholic. 



58 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

tletoe among the greens with which the church was 
decorated. It was, he observed, an unholy plant, 
profane by having been used by the Druids in their 
mystic ceremonies ; and though it might be innocently 
employed in the festive ornamenting of halls and 
kitchens, yet it had been deemed by the Fathers of the 
Church as unhallowed, and totally unfit for sacred 
purposes. So tenacious was he on this point, that 
the poor sexton was obliged to strip down a great part 
of the humble trophies of his taste, before the parson 
would consent to enter upon the service of the day. 

The interior of the church was venerable, but sim- 
ple ; on the walls were several mural monuments of 
the Bracebridges, and just beside the altar was a tomb 
of ancient workmanship, on which lay the effigy of a 
warrior in armor, with his legs crossed, a sign of his 
having been a crusader. I was told it was one of the 
family who had signalized himself in the Holy Land, 
and the same whose picture hung over the fire-place in 
the hall. 

During service, Master Simon stood up in the pew, 
and repeated the responses very audibly; evincing 
that kind of ceremonious devotion punctually observed 
by a gentleman of the old school, and a man of old 
family connections. I observed, too, that he turned 
over the leaves of a folio prayer-book with something 
of a flourish, possibly to show off an enormous seal-ring 
which enriched one of his fingers, and which had 
the look of a family relic. But he was evidently 
most solicitous about the musical part of the service, 
keeping his eye fixed intently on the choir, and beat- 
ing time with much gesticulation and emphasis. 

The orchestra was in a small gallery, and presented 
a most whimsical grouping of heads, piled one above 



CHRISTMAS DAY. 59 

the other, among which I particularly noticed that of 
the village tailor, a pale fellow with a retreating fore- 
head and chin, who played on the clarinet, and seemed 
to have blown his face to a point; and there was 
another, a short pursy man, stooping and laboring at 
a bass-viol, so as to show nothing but the topuof a 
round bald head, like the egg of an ostrich. There 
were two or three pretty faces among the female sing- 
ers, to which the keen air of a frosty morning had 
given a bright rosy tint ; but the gentlemen choristers 
had evidently been chosen, like old Cremona fiddles, 
more for tone than looks ; and as several had to sing 
from the same book, there were clusterings of odd 
physiognomies, not unlike those groups of cherubs we 
sometimes see on country tombstones. 

The usual services of the choir were managed toler- 
ably well, the vocal parts generally lagging a little 
behind the instrumental, and some loitering fiddler 
now and then making up for lost time by travelling 
over a passage with prodigious celerity, and clearing 
more bars than the keenest fox-hunter to be in at the 
death. But the great trial was an anthem that had 
been prepared and arranged by Master Simon, and on 
which he had founded great expectation. Unluckily 
there was a blunder at the very outset; the musicians 
became flurried ; Master Simon was in a fever ; every- 
thing went on lamely and irregularly until they came 
to a chorus beginning, "Now let us sing with one 
accord," which seemed to be a signal for parting com- 
pany : all became discord and confusion ; each shifted 
for himself, and got to the end as well, or, rather, as 
soon as he could, excepting one old chorister in a pair 
of horn spectacles, bestriding and pinching a long, 
sonorous nose, who happened to stand a little apart, 



60 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

and, being wrapped up in his own melody, kept on a 
quavering course, wriggling his head, ogling his book, 
and winding all up by a nasal solo of at least three 
bars' duration. 

The parson gave us a most erudite sermon on the 
rites and ceremonies of Christmas, and the propriety 
of observing it, not merely as a day of thanksgiving, 
but of rejoicing; supporting the correctness of his 
opinions by the earliest usages of the church, and 
enforcing them by the authorities of Theophilus of 
Cesarea, St. Cyprian, St. Chrysostom, St. Augustine, 
and a cloud more of Saints and Fathers, from whom 
he made copious quotations. I was a little at a loss 
to perceive the necessity of such a mighty array of 
forces to maintain a point which no one present seemed 
inclined to dispute; but I soon found that the good 
man had a legion of ideal adversaries to contend with; 
having, in the course of his researches on the subject 
of Christmas, got completely embroiled in the secta- 
rian controversies of the Revolution, when the Puri- 
tans made such a fierce assault upon the ceremonies 
of the church, and poor old Christmas was driven out 
of the land by proclamation of Parliament. 1 The 

1 From the Flying Eagle, a small gazette, published Decem- 
ber 24, 1652 : " The House spent much time this day about the 
business of the Navy, for settling the affairs at sea, and, before 
they rose, were presented with a terrible remonstrauce against 
Christmas day, grounded upon divine Scriptures, 2 Cor. v. 16 ; 1 
Cor. xv. 14, 17 ; and in honour of the Lord's Day, grounded 
upon these Scriptures, John xx. 1 ; Rev. i. 10 ; Psalm cxviii. 24; 
Lev. xxiii. 7, 11 ; Mark xv. 8 ; Psalm lxxxiv. 10 ; in which 
Christmas is called Anti-christ's masse, and those Masse-mon- 
gers and Papists who observe it, &c. In consequence of which 
Parliament spent some time in consultation about the abolition 
of Christmas day, passed orders to that effect, and resolved to sit 



CHRISTMAS DAY. 61 

worthy parson lived but with times past, and knew but 
little of the present. 

Shut up among worm-eaten tomes in the retirement 
of his antiquated little study, the pages of old times 
were to him as the gazettes of the day; while the era 
of the Revolution was mere modern history. He for- 
got that nearly two centuries had elapsed since the fiery 
persecution of poor mince-pie throughout the land; 
when plum porridge was denounced as "mere pop- 
ery," and roast beef as anti- christian ; and that Christ- 
mas had been brought in again triumphantly with the 
merry court of King Charles at the Restoration. He 
kindled into warmth with the ardor of his contest, and 
the host of imaginary foes with whom he had to com- 
bat ; he had a stubborn conflict with old Prynne and 
two or three other forgotten champions of the Round 
Heads, 1 on the subject of Christmas festivity; and 
concluded by urging his hearers, in the most solemn 
and affecting manner, to stand to the traditional cus- 
toms of their fathers, and feast and make merry on 
this joyful anniversary of the church. 

I have seldom known a sermon attended apparently 
with more immediate effects; for on leaving the 
church, the congregation seemed one and all possessed 
with the gayety of spirit so earnestly enjoined by their 
pastor. The elder folks gathered in knots in the 
church-yard, greeting and shaking hands; and the 
children ran about crying "Ule! Ule! " and repeating 

on the following day, which was commonly called Christmas 
day."— W. I. 

1 A nickname given to the Puritans, or Parliamentary 
party, in the reign of Charles I., in allusion to their short- 
cut hair. The Cavaliers, or Royalists, wore their hair in long 
ringlets. 



62 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

some uncouth rhymes, 1 which the parson, who had 
joined us, informed me had been handed down from 
days of yore. The villagers doffed their hats to the 
squire as he passed, giving him the good wishes of the 
season with every appearance of heartfelt sincerity, 
and were invited by him to the hall, to take something 
to keep out the cold of the weather ; and I heard bless- 
ings uttered by several of the poor, which convinced 
me that, in the midst of his enjoyments, the worthy 
old cavalier had not forgotten the true Christmas 
virtue of charity. 

On our way homeward, his heart seemed overflowed 
with generous and happy feelings. As we passed over 
a rising ground which commanded something of a 
prospect, the sounds of rustic merriment now and then 
reached our ears; the squire paused for a few mo- 
ments, and looked aroimd with an air of inexpressible 
benignity. The beauty of the day was, of itself, suf- 
ficient to inspire philanthropy. Notwithstanding the 
frostiness of the morning, the sun in his cloudless 
journey had acquired sufficient power to melt away 
the thin covering of snow from every southern decliv- 
ity, and to bring out the living green which adorns 
an English landscape even in mid-winter. Large 
tracts of smiling verdure contrasted with the dazzling 
whiteness of the shaded slopes and hollows. Every 
sheltered bank, on which the broad rays rested, 
yielded its silver rill of cold and limpid water, glit- 
tering through the dripping grass ; and sent up slight 
exhalations to contribute to the thin haze that hung 

i"Ule! Ule ! 
Three puddings in a pule ; 
Crack nuts and cry ' Ule.' " 

Ule is perhaps the same as Yule, a word that means Christmas. 

" Three puddings in a pule," that is, in a splutter or stew. 



CHRISTMAS DAY. 63 

just above the surface of the earth. There was some- 
thing truly cheering in this triumph of warmth and 
verdure over the frosty thraldom of winter; it was, 
as the squire observed, an emblem of Christmas hos- 
pitality, breaking through the chills of ceremony and 
selfishness, and thawing every heart into a flow. He 
pointed with pleasure to the indications of good cheer 
reeking from the chimneys of the comfortable farm- 
houses and low thatched cottages. "I love," said he, 
"to see this day well kept by rich and poor; it is a 
great thing to have one day in the year, at least, when 
you are sure of being welcome wherever you go, and 
of having, as it were, the world all thrown open to 
you; and I am almost disposed to join with Poor 
Robin, in his malediction on every churlish enemy to 
this honest festival : — 

" ' Those who at Christmas do repine, 

And would fain hence despatch him, 
May they with old Duke Humphry 3 dine, 
Or else may Squire Ketch 2 catch 'em.' " 

1 " It is cruel and shameful that the name of the worthy Duke 
Humphrey of Gloucester should be associated with the want of 
a dinner, for he was celebrated for his hospitality." 

Notes and Queries. 
Humphrey Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, was the youngest 
son of Henry IV., who reigned from 1399 to 1413. To dine 
with Duke Humphrey meant originally to have a good dinner, 
then to eat by the bounty of another, and finally, after the 
duke's death, it came to signify among his former almsmen, 
by a kind of irony, to go without a dinner. Another account 
plausibly attributes the proverb to a wit who came down from 
London with a party of friends to dine at the White Hart Inn at 
St. Albans, but who was accidentally shut up in the Abbey of St. 
Albans, where Humphrey lay buried, and so lost his dinner. 

2 Also known as Jack Ketch, a name given in England to the 
public hangman or executioner. 



64 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

The squire went on to lament the deplorable decay 
of the games and amusements which were once preva- 
lent at this season among the lower orders, and coun- 
tenanced by the higher; when the old halls of castles 
and manor-houses were thrown open at daylight ; when 
the tables were covered with brawn, and beef, and 
humming ale ; when the harp and the carol resounded 
all day long, and when rich and poor were alike wel- 
come to enter and make merry. 1 "Our old games 
and local customs," said he, "had a great effect in 
making the peasant fond of his home, and the promo- 
tion of them by the gentry made him fond of his lord. 
They made the times merrier, and kinder, and better, 
and I can truly say, with one of our old poets, — 

" ' I like them well — the curious preciseness 
And all-pretended gravity of those 
That seek to banish hence these harmless sports, 
Have thrust away much ancient honesty.' 

"The nation," continued he, "is altered; we have 
almost lost our simple true-hearted peasantry. They 
have broken asunder from the higher classes, and seem 
to think their interests are separate. They have 
become too knowing, and begin to read newspapers, 
listen to alehouse politicians, and talk of reform. I 
think one mode to keep them in good humor in these 
hard times would be for the nobility and gentry to 

1 " An English gentleman at the opening of the great day, i. e. 
on Christmas day in the morning, had all his tenants and neigh- 
bors enter his hall by day-break. The strong beer was broached, 
and the black jacks went plentifully about with toast, sugar and 
nutmeg, and good Cheshire cheese. The Hackin (the great sau- 
sage) must be boiled by daybreak, or else two young men must 
take the maiden (i. e. the cook) by the arms and run her round 
the market-place till she is shamed of her laziness," (Quoted 
by Irving from Round about our Sea-Coal Fire.) 



CHRISTMAS DAY. 65 

pass more time on their estates, mingle more among 
the country people, and set the merry old English 
games going again." 

Such was the good squire's project for mitigating 
public discontent : and, indeed, he had once attempted 
to put his doctrine in practice, and a few years before 
had kept open house during the holidays in the old 
style. The country people, however, did not under- 
stand how to play their parts in the scene of hospital- 
ity ; many uncouth circumstances occurred ; the manor 
was overrun by all the vagrants of the country, and 
more beggars drawn into the neighborhood in one 
week than the parish officers could get rid of in a 
year. Since then, he had contented himself with 
inviting the decent part of the neighboring peasantry 
to call at the hall on Christmas day, and with distrib- 
uting beef, and bread, and ale, among the poor, that 
they might make merry in their own dwellings. 

We had not been long home when the sound of 
music was heard from a distance. A band of coun- 
try lads, without coats, their shirt sleeves fancifully 
tied with ribbons, their hats decorated with greens, 
and clubs in their hands, were seen advancing up the 
avenue, followed by a large number of villagers and 
peasantry. They stopped before the hall door, where 
the music struck up a peculiar air, and the lads per- 
formed a curious and intricate dance, advancing, 
retreating, and striking their clubs together, keeping 
exact time to the music; while one, whimsically 
crowned with a fox's skin, the tail of which flaunted 
down his back, kept capering round the skirts of the 
dance, and rattling a Christmas-box with many antic 
gesticulations. 

The squire eyed this fanciful exhibition with great 



66 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

interest and delight, and gave me a full account of its 
origin, which he traced to the times when the Romans 
held possession of the island ; plainly proving that this 
was a lineal descendant of the sword-dance of the 
ancients. "It was now," he said, "nearly extinct, 
but he had accidentally met with traces of it in the 
neighborhood, and had encouraged its revival ; though, 
to tell the truth, it was too apt to be followed up by 
the rough cudgel-play, and broken heads in the even- 
ing." 

After the dance was concluded, the whole party 
was entertained with brawn and beef, and stout home- 
brewed. The squire himself mingled among the rus- 
tics, and was received with awkward demonstrations 
of deference and regard. It is true, I perceived two or 
three of the younger peasants, as they were raising 
their tankards to their mouths, when the squire's back 
was turned, making something of a grimace, and giv- 
ing each other the wink; but the moment they caught 
my eye they pulled grave faces, and were exceedingly 
demure. With Master Simon, however, they all 
seemed more at their ease. His varied occupations 
and amusements had made him well known through- 
out the neighborhood. He was a visitor at every 
farmhouse and cottage; gossiped with the farmers 
and their wives ; romped with their daughters ; and, 
like that type of a vagrant bachelor, the humble-bee, 
toiled the sweets from all the rosy lips of the country 
round. 

The bashfulness of the guests soon gave way before 
good cheer and affability. There is something genu- 
ine and affectionate in the gayety of the lower orders, 
when it is excited by the bounty and familiarity of 
those above them; the warm glow of gratitude enters 



CHRISTMAS DAY. 67 

into their mirth, and a kind word or a small plea- 
santry frankly uttered by a patron, gladdens the heart 
of the dependent more than oil and wine. When the 
squire had retired, the merriment increased, and there 
was much joking and laughter, particularly between 
Master Simon and a hale, ruddy -faced, white-headed 
farmer, who appeared to be the wit of the village ; for 
I observed all his companions to wait with open 
mouths for his retorts, and burst into a gratuitous 
laugh before they could well understand them. 

The whole house indeed seemed abandoned to merri- 
ment; as I passed to my room to dress for dinner, I 
heard the sound of music in a small court, and look- 
ing through a window that commanded it, I perceived 
a band of wandering musicians, with pandean pipes 
and tambourine; a pretty, coquettish housemaid was 
dancing a jig with a smart country lad, while several 
of the other servants were looking on. In the midst 
of her sport the girl caught a glimpse of my face at 
the window, and, coloring up, ran off with an air of 
roguish affected confusion. 



68 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

THE SPECTRE BRIDEGROOM. 
A TRAVELLER'S TALE. 1 

He that supper for is dight, 

He lyes full cold, I trow, this night .' 

Yestreen to chamber I him led, 

This night Gray-steel has made his bed ! 

Sib Egee, Sib Gbahame, and Sib Gbay-sterl. 

On the summit of one of the heights of the Oden- 
wald, a wild and romantic tract of Upper Germany, 
that lies not far from the confluence of the Maine and 
the Rhine, there stood, many, many years since, the 
Castle of the Baron Von Landshort. It is now quite 
fallen to decay, and almost buried among beech trees 
and dark firs; above which, however, its old watch- 
tower may still be seen struggling, like the former 
possessor I have mentioned, to carry a high head, and 
look down upon a neighboring country. 

The baron was a dry branch of the great family of 
Katzenellenbogen, 2 and inherited the relics of the prop- 
erty, and all the pride, of his ancestors. Though the 
warlike disposition of his predecessors had much 
impaired the family possessions, yet the baron still 
endeavored to keep up some show of former state. 
The times were peaceable, and the German nobles, in 
general, had abandoned their inconvenient old castles, 
perched like eagles' nests among the mountains, and 

1 The erudite reader, well versed in good-for-nothing lore, 
will perceive that the above Tale must have been suggested to 
the old Swiss by a little French anecdote, a circumstance said to 
have taken place in Paris. — W. I. 

2 Cat's Elbow — the name of a family of those parts, very 
powerful in former times. The appellation, we are told, was 
given in compliment to a peerless dame of the family, celebrated 
for her fine arm. — W. I. 



THE SPECTRE BRIDEGROOM. 69 

had built more convenient residences in the valleys; 
still the baron remained proudly drawn up in his little 
fortress, cherishing with hereditary inveteracy all the 
old family feuds; so that he was on ill terms with 
some of his nearest neighbors, on account of disputes 
that had happened between their great-great-grand- 
fathers. 

The baron had but one child, a daughter; but Na- 
ture, when she grants but one child, always compen- 
sates by making it a prodigy ; and so it was with the 
daughter of the baron. All the nurses, gossips, and 
country cousins, assured her father that she had not 
her equal for beauty in all Germany ; and who should 
know better than they? She had, moreover, been 
brought up with great care under the superintendence 
of two maiden aunts, who had spent some years of 
their early life at one of the little German courts, and 
were skilled in all the branches of knowledge necessary 
to the education of a fine lady. Under their instruc- 
tions she became a miracle of accomplishments. By 
the time she was eighteen she could embroider to 
admiration, and had worked whole histories of the 
saints in tapestry, with such strength of expression in 
their countenances, that they looked like so many souls 
in purgatory. She could read without great difficulty, 
and had spelled her way through several church 
legends, and almost all the chivalric wonders of the 
Heldenbuch. 1 She had even made considerable pro- 
ficiency in writing; could sign her own name without 
missing a letter, and so legibly that her aunts could 
read it without spectacles. She excelled in making 
little elegant good-for-nothing lady -like knick-knacks 

1 A collection of German epic poems. The word means look 
of heroes. 



70 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

of all kinds ; was versed in the most abstruse dancing 
of the day ; played a number of airs on the harp and 
guitar ; and knew all the tender ballads of the Minnie- 
lieders 1 by heart. 

Her aunts, too, having been great flirts and 
coquettes in their younger days, were admirably cal- 
culated to be vigilant guardians and strict censors of 
the conduct of their niece; for there is no duenna so 
rigidly prudent, and inexorably decorous, as a super- 
annuated coquette. She was rarely suffered out of 
their sight; never went beyond the domains of the 
castle, unless well attended, or rather well watched; 
had continual lectures read to her about strict deco- 
rum and implicit obedience; and as to the men — 
pah! she was taught to hold them at such a distance 
and in such absolute distrust, that, unless properly 
authorized, she would not have cast a glance upon the 
handsomest cavalier in the world — no, not if he were 
even dying at her feet. 

The good effects of this system were wonderfully 
apparent. The young lady was a pattern of docility 
and correctness. While others were wasting their 
sweetness in the glare of the world, and liable to be 
plucked and thrown aside by every hand, she was 
coyly blooming into fresh and lovely womanhood 
under the protection of those immaculate spinsters, 
like a rose-bud blushing forth among guardian thorns. 
Her aunts looked upon her with pride and exultation, 
and vaunted that though all the other young ladies 
in the world might go astray, yet, thank Heaven, 

] That is, minnesingers, or love-singers, a class of German 
poets and musicians who flourished from the twelfth to the four- 
teenth century. They were chiefly of noble birth, and wrote and 
sang of love and beauty. 



THE SPECTRE BRIDEGROOM. 71 

nothing of the kind could happen to the heiress of 
Katzenellenbogen. 

But however scantily the Baron Yon Landshort 
might be provided with children, his household was 
by no means a small one, for Providence had enriched 
him with abundance of poor relations. They, one and 
all, possessed the affectionate disposition common to 
humble relatives; were wonderfully attached to the 
baron, and took every possible occasion to come in 
swarms and enliven the castle. All family festivals 
were commemorated by these good people at the bar- 
on's expense; and when they were filled with good 
cheer, they would declare that there was nothing on 
earth so delightful as these family meetings, these 
jubilees of the heart. 

The baron, though a small man, had a large soul, 
and it swelled with satisfaction at the consciousness of 
being the greatest man in the little world about him. 
He loved to tell long stories about the stark old war- 
riors whose portraits looked grimly down from the 
walls around, and he found no listeners equal to those 
who fed at his expense. He was much given to the 
marvellous, and a firm believer in all those supernat- 
ural tales with which every mountain and valley in 
Germany abounds. The faith of his guests exceeded 
even his own : they listened to every tale of wonder 
with open eyes and mouth, and never failed to be 
astonished, even though repeated for the hundredth 
time. Thus lived the Baron Yon Landshort, the 
oracle of his table, the absolute monarch of his little 
territory, and happy, above all things, in the per- 
suasion that he was the wisest man of the age. 

At the time of which my story treats, there was 
a great family gathering at the castle, on an affair of 



72 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

the utmost importance : it was to receive the destined 
bridegroom of the baron's daughter. A negotiation 
had been carried on between the father and an old 
nobleman of Bavaria, to unite the dignity of their 
houses by the marriage of their children. The pre- 
liminaries had been conducted with proper punctilio. 
The young people were betrothed without seeing each 
other, and the time was appointed for the marriage 
ceremony. The young Count Von Altenburg had 
been recalled from the army for the purpose, and was 
actually on his way to the baron's to receive his bride. 
Missives had even been received from him, from 
Wurtzburg, where he was accidentally detained, men- 
tioning the day and hour when he might be expected 
to arrive. 

The castle was in a tumult of preparation to give 
him a suitable welcome. The fair bride had been 
decked out with uncommon care. The two aunts had 
superintended her toilet, and quarrelled the whole 
morning about every article of her dress. The young 
lady had taken advantage of their contest to follow the 
bent of her own taste ; and fortunately it was a good 
one. She looked as lovely as youthful bridegroom 
could desire ; and the flutter of expectation heightened 
the lustre of her charms. 

The suffusions that mantled her face and neck, the 
gentle heaving of the bosom, the eye now and then 
lost in reverie, all betrayed the soft tumult that was 
going on in her little heart. The aunts were continu- 
ally hovering around her ; for maiden aunts are apt 
to take great interest in affairs of this nature. They 
were giving her a world of staid counsel how to deport 
herself, what to say, and in what manner to receive 
the expected lover. 



THE SPECTRE BRIDEGROOM. 73 

The baron was no less busied in preparations. He 
had, in truth, nothing exactly to do; but he was nat- 
urally a fuming, bustling little man, and could not 
remain passive when all the world was in a hurry. He 
worried from top to bottom of the castle, with an air 
of infinite anxiety; he continually called the servants 
from their work to exhort them to be diligent, and 
buzzed about every hall and chamber, as idly restless 
and importunate as a blue -bottle fly of a warm sum- 
mer's day. 

In the meantime the fatted calf had been killed ; the 
forests had rung with the clamor of the huntsmen ; the 
kitchen was crowded with good cheer; the cellars had 
yielded up whole oceans of Rhein-wein and Feme- 
wein, and even the great Heidelburg tun 2 had been laid 
under contribution. Everything was ready to receive 
the distinguished guest with jSaus unci Braus 2 in the 
true spirit of German hospitality — but the guest 
delayed to make his appearance. Hour rolled after 
hour. The sun, that had poured his downward rays 
upon the rich forest of the Odenwald, now just 
gleamed along the summits of the mountains. The 
baron mounted the highest tower, and strained his 
eyes in hopes of catching a distant sight of the count 
and his attendants. Once he thought he beheld them ; 
the sound of horns came floating from the valley, pro- 
longed by the mountain echoes. A number of horse- 
men were seen far below, slowly advancing along the 

1 A huge cask capable of containing eight hundred hogsheads. 
It is in the cellar of the ruined castle of Heidelberg, an ancient 
and picturesque city of Germany. 

2 Literally, riot and noise. The expression is intended to cover 
the hearty good cheer, gayety, and hilarity of a warm reception. 
Something of the German flavor is lost in any translation. Pro- 
nunciation, souce {pu as in house) oont brouce. 



74 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

road ; but when they had nearly reached the foot of 
the mountain, they suddenly struck off in a different 
direction. The last ray of sunshine departed — the 
bats began to flit by in the twilight — the road grew 
dimmer and dimmer to the view ; and nothing appeared 
stirring in it, but now and then a peasant lagging 
homeward from his labor. 

While the old castle of Landshort was in this state 
of perplexity, a very interesting scene was transacting 
in a different part of the Odenwald. 

The young Count Von Altenburg was tranquilly 
pursuing his route in that sober jog-trot way, in which 
a man travels toward matrimony when his friends 
have taken all the trouble and uncertainty of court- 
ship off his hands, and a bride is waiting for him, as 
certainly as a dinner, at the end of his journey. He 
had encountered at Wurtzburg a youthful companion 
in arms, with whom he had seen some service on the 
frontiers ; Herman Yon Starkenf aust, one of the stout- 
est hands and worthiest hearts of German chivalry, 
who was now returning from the army. His father's 
castle was not far distant from the old fortress of Land- 
short, although an hereditary feud rendered the fami- 
lies hostile, and strangers to each other. 

In the warm-hearted moment of recognition, the 
young friends related all their past adventures and 
fortunes, and the count gave the whole history of his 
intended nuptials with a young lady whom he had 
never seen, but of whose charms he had received the 
most enrapturing descriptions. 

As the route of the friends lay in the same direc- 
tion, they agreed to perforin the rest of their journey 
together; and, that they might do it the more lei- 
surely, set off from Wurtzburg at an early hour, the 



THE SPECTRE BRIDEGROOM. 15 

count having given directions for his retinue to follow 
and overtake him. 

They beguiled their wayfaring with recollections of 
their military scenes and adventures; but the count 
was apt to be a little tedious, now and then, about 
the reputed charms of his bride, and the felicity that 
awaited him. 

In this way they had entered among the mountains 
of the Odenwald, and were traversing one of its most 
lonely and thickly wooded passes. It is well known 
that the forests of Germany have always been as much 
infested by robbers as its castles by spectres ; and at 
this time the former were particularly numerous, from 
the hordes of disbanded soldiers wandering about the 
country. It will not appear extraordinary, therefore, 
that the cavaliers were attacked by a gang of these 
stragglers, in the midst of the forest. They defended 
themselves with bravery, but were nearly overpow- 
ered, when the count's retinue arrived to their assis- 
tance. At sight of them the robbers fled, but not 
until the count had received a mortal wound. He was 
slowly and carefully conveyed back to the city of 
Wurtzburg, and a friar summoned from a neighbor- 
ing convent, who was famous for his skill in adminis- 
tering to both soul and body. But half of his skill 
was superfluous; the moments of the unfortunate 
count were numbered. 

With his dying breath he entreated his friend to re- 
pair instantly to the castle of Landshort, and explain 
the fatal cause of his not keeping his appointment 
with his bride. Though not the most ardent of lovers, 
he was one of the most punctilious of men, and ap- 
peared earnestly solicitous that his mission should be 
speedily and courteously executed. "Unless this is 



76 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

done," said he, "I shall not sleep quietly in my 
grave ! " He repeated these last words with peculiar 
solemnity. A request, at a moment so impressive, 
admitted no hesitation. Starkenfaust endeavored to 
soothe him to calmness; promised faithfully to exe- 
cute his wish, and gave him his hand in solemn 
pledge. The dying man pressed it in acknowledg- 
ment, but soon lapsed into delirium — raved about his 
bride — his engagements — his plighted word ; ordered 
his horse, that he might ride to the castle of Landshort, 
and expired in the fancied act of vaulting into the 
saddle. 

Starkenfaust bestowed a sigh and a soldier's tear 
on the untimely fate of his comrade, and then pon- 
dered on the awkward mission he had undertaken. 
His heart was heavy, and his head perplexed ; for he 
was to present himself an unbidden guest among hos- 
tile people, and to damp their festivity with tidings 
fatal to their hopes. Still there were certain whisper- 
ings of curiosity in his bosom to see this far-famed 
beauty of Katzenellenbogen, so cautiously shut up 
from the world; for he was a passionate admirer of 
the sex, and there was a dash of eccentricity and en- 
terprise in his character, that made him fond of all 
singular adventure. 

Previous to his departure he made all due arrange- 
ments with the holy fraternity of the convent for the 
funeral solemnities of his friend, who was to be buried 
in the cathedral of Wurtzburg, near some of his illus- 
trious relatives; and the mourning retinue of the 
count took charge of his remains. 

It is now high time that we should return to the an- 
cient family of Katzenellenbogen, who were impatient 
for their guest, and still more for their dinner ; and to 



THE SPECTRE BRIDEGROOM. 77 

the worthy little baron, whom we left airing himself 
on the watch-tower. 

Night closed in, but still no guest arrived. The 
baron descended from the tower in despair. The 
banquet, which had been delayed from hour to houi\ 
could no longer be postponed. The meats were already 
overdone ; the cook in an agony ; and the whole house- 
hold had the look of a garrison that had been reduced 
by famine. The baron was obliged reluctantly to give 
orders for the feast without the presence of the guest. 
All were seated at table, and just on the point of com- 
mencing, when the sound of a horn from without the 
gate gave notice of the approach of a stranger. An- 
other long blast filled the old courts of the castle with 
its echoes, and was answered by the warder from the 
walls. The baron hastened to receive his future son- 
in-law. 

The drawbridge had been let down, and thq stran- 
ger was before the gate. He was a tall, gallant cav- 
alier, mounted on a black steed. His countenance was 
pale, but he had a beaming, romantic eye, and an air 
of stately melancholy. The baron was a little morti- 
fied that he should have come in this simple, solitary 
style. His dignity for a moment was ruffled, and he 
felt disposed to consider it a want of proper respect 
for the important occasion, and the important family 
with which he was to be connected. He pacified him- 
self, however, with the conclusion that it must have 
been youthful impatience which had induced him thus 
to spur on sooner than his attendants. 

"I am sorry," said the stranger, "to break in upon 
you thus unseasonably " — 

Here the baron interrupted him with a world of 
compliments and greeting; for, to tell the truth, he 



78 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

prided himself upon his courtesy and eloquence. The 
stranger attempted, once or twice, to stem the torrent 
of words, but in vain, so he bowed his head and suf- 
fered it to flow on. By the time the baron had come 
.to a pause, they had reached the inner court of the 
castle ; and the stranger was again about to speak, 
when he was once more interrupted by the appearance 
of the female part of the family, leading forth the 
shrinking and blushing bride. He gazed on her for 
a moment as one entranced ; it seemed as if his whole 
soul beamed forth in the gaze, and rested upon that 
lovely form. One of the maiden aunts whispered 
something in her ear; she made an effort to speak; 
her moist blue eye was timidly raised, gave a shy 
glance of inquiry on the stranger, and was cast again 
to the ground. The words died away ; but there was 
a sweet smile playing about her lips, and a soft dim- 
pling of the cheek that showed her glance had not been 
unsatisfactory. It was impossible for a girl of the 
fond age of eighteen, highly predisposed for love and 
matrimony, not to be pleased with so gallant a cav- 
alier. 

The late hour at which the guest had arrived left no 
time for parley. The baron was peremptory, and de- 
ferred all particular conversation until the morning, 
and led the way to the untasted banquet. 

It was served up in the great hall of the castle. 
Around the walls hung the hard-favored portraits of 
the heroes of the house of Katzenellenbogen, and the 
trophies which they had gained in the field and in the 
chase. Hacked, croslets, splintered jousting spears, 
and tattered banners were mingled with the spoils of 
sylvan warfare ; the jaws of the wolf and the tusks of 
the boar grinned horribly among cross-bows and bat- 



THE SPECTRE BRIDEGROOM. 79 

tie-axes, and a huge pair of antlers branched immedi- 
ately over the head of the youthful bridegroom. 

The cavalier took but little notice of the company 
or the entertainment. He scarcely tasted the banquet, 
but seemed absorbed in admiration of his bride. He 
conversed in a low tone, that could not be overheard 
— for the language of love is never loud ; but where 
is the female ear so dull that it cannot catch the soft- 
est whisper of the lover? There was a mingled ten- 
derness and gravity in his manner that appeared to 
have a powerful effect upon the young lady. Her 
color came and went, as she listened with deep atten- 
tion. Now and then she made some blushing reply, 
and when his eye was turned away, she would steal a 
sidelong glance at his romantic countenance, and heave 
a gentle sigh of tender happiness. It was evident that 
the young couple were completely enamoured. The 
aunts, who were deeply versed in the mysteries of the 
heart, declared that they had fallen in love with each 
other at first sight. 

The feast went on merrily, or at least noisily, for 
the guests were all blessed with those keen appetites 
that attend upon light purses and mountain air. The 
baron told his best and longest stories, and never had 
he told them so well, or with such great effect. If 
there was anything marvellous, his auditors were lost 
in astonishment ; and if anything facetious, they were 
sure to laugh exactly in the right place. The baron, 
it is true, like most great men, was too dignified to 
utter any joke but a dull one; it was always enforced, 
however, by a bumper of excellent Hochheimer ; and 
even a dull joke, at one's own table, served up with 
jolly old wine, is irresistible. Many good things were 
said by poorer and keener wits, that would not bear 
repeating, except on similar occasions; many sly 



80 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

speeches whispered in ladies' ears, that almost con- 
vulsed them with suppressed laughter ; and a song or 
two roared out by a poor but merry and broad-faced 
cousin of the baron, that absolutely made the maiden 
aunts hold up their fans. 

Amidst all this revelry, the stranger guest main- 
tained a most singular and unseasonable gravity. His 
countenance assumed a deeper cast of dejection as the 
evening advanced, and, strange as it may appear, even 
the baron's jokes seemed only to render him the more 
melancholy. At times he was lost in thought, and at 
times there was a perturbed and restless wandering of 
the eye that bespoke a mind but ill at ease. His con- 
versation with the bride became more and more ear- 
nest and mysterious. Lowering clouds began to steal 
over the fair serenity of her brow, and tremors to run 
through her tender frame. 

All this could not escape the notice of the company. 
Their gayety was chilled by the unaccountable gloom 
of the bridegroom ; their spirits were infected ; whis- 
pers and glances were interchanged, accompanied by 
shrugs and dubious shakes of the head. The song and 
the laugh grew less and less frequent; there were 
dreary pauses in the conversation, which were at 
length succeeded by wild tales and supernatural le- 
gends. One dismal story produced another still more 
dismal, and the baron nearly frightened some of the 
ladies into hysterics with the history of the goblin 
horseman that carried away the fair Leonora; l a 

1 The heroine of a popular ballad by Burger (1748-1794), a 
German lyric poet. Her lover dies, reappears to Leonora after 
his death, and carries her off on horseback behind him : 
Tramp, tramp, across the land they speede ; 
Splash, splash, across the see : 
" Hurrah ! the dead can ride apace ; 
Dost feare to ride with mee ? " 

From Taylor's Translation. 



THE SPECTRE BRIDEGROOM. 81 

dreadful story, which has since been put into excellent 
verse, and is read and believed by all the world. 

The bridegroom listened to this tale with profound 
attention. He kept his eyes steadily fixed on the 
baron, and, as the story drew to a close, began grad- 
ually to rise from his seat, growing taller and taller, 
until, in the baron's entranced eye, he seemed almost 
to tower into a giant. The moment the tale was fin- 
ished, he heaved a deep sigh, and took a solemn fare- 
well of the company. They were all amazement. The 
baron was perfectly thunderstruck. 

"What ! going to leave the castle at midnight? 
why, everything was prepared for his reception; a 
chamber was ready for him if he wished to retire." 

The stranger shook his head mournfully and myste- 
riously: "I must lay my head in a different chamber 
to-night!" 

There was something in this reply, and the tone in 
which it was uttered, that made the baron's heart mis- 
give him ; but he rallied his forces, and repeated his 
hospitable entreaties. The stranger shook his head 
silently, but positively, at every offer; and, waving 
his farewell to the company, stalked slowly out of the 
hall. The maiden aunts were absolutely petrified ; the 
bride hung her head, and a tear stole to her eye. 

The baron followed the stranger to the great court of 
the castle, where the black charger stood pawing the 
earth, and snorting with impatience. When they had 
reached the portal, whose deep archway was dimly 
lighted by a cresset, 1 the stranger paused, and ad- 
dressed the baron in a hollow tone of voice, which the 
vaulted roof rendered still more sepulchral. "Now 

1 Starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed 
With naphtha and asphaltus. 
Milton. 



82 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

that we are alone," said he, "I will impart to you the 
reason of ray going. I have a solemn, an indispensa- 
ble engagement" — 

4 'Why," said the baron, "cannot you send some 
one in your place?" 

" It admits of no substitute — I must attend it in 
person — I must away to Wurtzburg cathedral " — 

" Ay," said the baron, plucking up spirit, "but not 
until to-morrow — to-morrow you shall take your bride 
there." 

"No! no! "replied the stranger, with tenfold so- 
lemnity, "my engagement is with no bride — the 
worms ! the worms expect me ! I am a dead man — I 
have been slain by robbers — my body lies at Wurtz- 
burg — at midnight I am to be buried — the grave is 
waiting for me — I must keep my appointment! " 

He sprang on his black charger, dashed over the 
drawbridge, and the clattering of his horse's hoofs 
was lost in the whistling of the night blast. 

The baron returned to the hall in the utmost con- 
sternation, and related what had passed. Two ladies 
fainted outright ; others sickened at the idea of having 
banqueted with a spectre. It was the opinion of 
some, that this might be the wild huntsman, 1 famous 
in German legend. Some talked of mountain sprites, 
of wood-demons, and of other supernatural beings, 
with which the good people of Germany have been so 
grievously harassed since time immemorial. One of 
the poor relations ventured to suggest that it might 

He is the subject of a popular German tradition that repre- 
sents him as a spectre, appearing at night with his dogs and 
sometimes with a' train of attendants, and urging on the chase. 
There are similar traditions in France, England, and Scotland. 
Burger has made the wild huntsman the subject of a ballad, 
Der Wilde Jager. 



THE SPECTRE BRIDEGROOM. 83 

be some sportive evasion of the young cavalier, and 
that the very gloominess of the caprice seemed to ac- 
cord with so melancholy a personage. This, however, 
drew on him the indignation of the whole company, 
and especially of the baron, who looked upon him as 
little better than an infidel ; so that he was fain to ab- 
jure his heresy as speedily as possible, and come into 
the faith of the true believers. 

But whatever may have been the doubts entertained, 
they were completely put to an end by the arrival, 
next day, of regular missives, confirming the intelli- 
gence of the young count's murder, and his interment 
in Wurtzburg cathedral. 

The dismay at the castle may well be imagined. 
The baron shut himself up in his chamber. The 
guests, who had come to rejoice with him, could not 
think of abandoning him in his distress. They wan- 
dered about the courts, or collected in groups in the 
hall, shaking their heads and shrugging their shoul- 
ders, at the troubles of so good a man ; and sat longer 
than ever at table, and ate and drank more stoutly than 
ever, by way of keeping up their spirits. But the 
situation of the widowed bride was the most pitiable. 
To have lost a husband before she had even embraced 
him — and such a husband ! if the very spectre could 
be so gracious and noble, what must have been the 
living man? She filled the house with lamentations. 

On the night of the second day of her widowhood, 
she had retired to her chamber, accompanied by one 
of her aunts, wha insisted on sleeping with her. The 
aunt, who was one of the best tellers of ghost stories 
in all Germany, had just been recounting one of her 
longest, and had fallen asleep in the very midst of it. 
The chamber was remote, and overlooked a small 



84 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

garden. The niece lay pensively gazing at the beams 
of the rising moon, as they trembled on the leaves of 
an aspen -tree before the lattice. The castle clock had 
jnst tolled midnight, when a soft strain of music stole 
up from the garden. She rose hastily from her bed 
and stepped lightly to the window. A tall figure stood 
anions: the shadows of the trees. As it raised its 
head, a beam of moonlight fell upon the countenance. 
Heavens and earth! she beheld the Spectre Bride- 
groom ! A loud shriek at that moment burst upon 
her ear, and her aunt, who had been awakened by the 
music, and had followed her silently to the window, 
fell into her arms. When she looked again, the 
spectre had disappeared. 

Of the two females, the aunt now required the most 
soothing, for she was perfectly beside herself with 
terror. As to the young lady, there was something, 
even in the spectre of her lover, that seemed endear- 
ing. There was still the semblance of manly beauty; 
and though the shadow of a man is but little calculated 
to satisfy the affections of a love-sick girl, yet, where 
the substance is not to be had, even that is consol- 
ing. The aunt declared she would never sleep in that 
chamber again; the niece, for once, was refractory, 
and declared as strongly that she would sleep in no 
other in the castle: the consequence was, that she 
had to sleep in it alone ; but she drew a promise from 
her aunt not to relate the story of the spectre, lest she 
should be denied the only melancholy pleasure left her 
on earth — that of inhabiting the chamber over which 
the guardian shade of her lover kept its nightly vigils. 

How long the good old lady would have observed 
this promise is uncertain, for she dearly loved to talk 
of the marvellous, and there is a triumph in being the 



THE SPECTRE BRIDEGROOM. 85 

first to tell a frightful story; it is, however, still 
quoted in the neighborhood, as a memorable instance 
of female secrecy, that she kept it to herself for a 
whole week ; when she was suddenly absolved from all 
further restraint, by intelligence brought to the break- 
fast table one morning that the young lady was not to 
be found. Her room was empty — the bed had not 
been slept in — the window was open, and the bird 
had flown ! 

The astonishment and concern with which the in- 
telligence was received, can only be imagined by 
those who have witnessed the agitation which the mis- 
haps of a great man cause among his friends. Even 
the poor relations paused for a moment from the inde- 
fatigable labors of the trencher; when the aunt, who 
had at first been struck speechless, wrung her hands, 
and shrieked out, "The goblin! the goblin! she's 
carried away by the goblin! " 

In a few words she related the fearful scene of the 
garden, and concluded that the spectre must have car- 
ried off his bride. Two of the domestics corroborated 
the opinion, for they had heard the clattering of a 
horse's hoofs down the mountain about midnight, and 
had no doubt that it was the spectre on his black 
charger, bearing her away to the tomb. All present 
were struck with the direful probability; for events 
of the kind are extremely common in Germany, as 
many well authenticated histories bear witness. 

What a lamentable situation was that of the poor 
baron! What a heart-rending dilemma for a fond 
father, and a member of the great family of Katzen- 
ellenbogen ! His only daughter had either been rapt 
away to the grave, or he was to have some wood- 
demon for a son-in-law, and, perchance, a troop of 



86 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

goblin grandchildren. As usual, he was completely 
bewildered, and all the castle in an uproar. The men 
were ordered to take horse, and scour* every road and 
path and glen of the Odenwald. The baron himself 
had just drawn on his jack-boots, girded on his sword, 
and was about to mount his steed to sally forth on the 
doubtfid quest, when he was brought to a pause by 
a new apparition. A lady was seen approaching the 
castle, mounted on a palfrey, attended by a cavalier 
on horseback. She galloped up to the gate, sprang 
from her horse, and falling at the baron's feet 
embraced his knees. It was his lost daughter, and 
her companion — the Spectre Bridegroom! The 
baron was astounded. He looked at his daughter, 
then at the spectre, and almost doubted the evidence 
of his senses. The latter, too, was wonderfully im- 
proved in his appearance, since his visit to the world 
of spirits. His dress was splendid, and set off a 
noble figure of manly symmetry. He was no longer 
pale and melancholy. His fine countenance was 
flushed with the glow of youth, and joy rioted in his 
large dark eye. 

The mystery was soon cleared up. The cavalier (for 
in truth, as you must have known all the while, he 
was no goblin) announced himself as Sir Herman Yon 
Starkenfaust. He related his adventure with the 
young count. He told how he had hastened to the 
castle to deliver the unwelcome tidings, but that the 
eloquence of the baron had interrupted him in every 
attempt to tell his tale ; how the sight of the bride had 
completely captivated him, and that to pass a few 
hours near her, he had tacitly suffered the mistake to 
continue ; how he had been sorely perplexed in what 
way to make a decent retreat, until the baron's goblin 



THE SPECTRE BRIDEGROOM. 87 

stories had suggested his eccentric exit; how, fearing 
the feudal hostility of the family, he had repeated his 
visits by stealth — had haunted the garden beneath 
the young lady's window — had wooed — had won — 
had borne away in triumph — and, in a word, had 
wedded the fair. 

Under any other circumstances the baron would 
have been inflexible, for he was tenacious of paternal 
authority, and devoutly obstinate in all family feuds ; 
but he loved his daughter; he had lamented her as 
lost ; he rejoiced to find her still alive ; and, though 
her husband was of a hostile house, yet, thank Heaven, 
he was not a goblin. There was something, it must 
be acknowledged, that did not exactly accord with his 
notions of strict veracity, in the joke the knight had 
passed upon him of his being a dead man ; but several 
old friends present, who had served in the wars, 
assured him that every stratagem was excusable in 
love, and that the cavalier was entitled to especial 
privilege, having lately served as a trooper. 

Matters, therefore, were happily arranged. The 
baron pardoned the young couple on the spot. The 
revels at the castle were resumed. The poor relations 
overwhelmed this new member of the family with lov- 
ing kindness ; he was so gallant, so generous, — and 
so rich. The aunts, it is true, were somewhat scan- 
dalized that their system of strict seclusion and passive 
obedience should be so badly exemplified, but attrib- 
uted it all to their negligence in not having the win- 
dows grated. One of them was particularly mortified 
at having her marvellous story marred, and that the 
only spectre she had ever seen should turn out a coun- 
terfeit ; but the niece seemed perfectly happy at hav- 
ing found him substantial flesh and blood, — and so 
the story ends. 



88 WASHINGTON IRVING. 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 

The foundations of Westminster Abbey were laid in 1055 A. d. The 
principal parts of the existing abbey were built by Henry III. Henry 
VII. added the chapel that bears his name. Additions and changes 
have been made at intervals throughout its history. Its extreme 
length is 511 feet; its extreme width, 203 feet. The height of the 
roof is 102 feet. Its shape is that of a cross. The interior of the 
abbey has at all times aroused the most ardent admiration. 

Dean Stanley gives the following account of its founding : — 

" There are, probably, but few Englishmen now who care to know 
that the full title of Westminster Abbey is the ' Collegiate Church or 
Abbey of St. Peter.' But at the time of its first foundation, and 
long afterwards, the whole neighborhood and the whole story of the 
foundation breathed of nothing else but the name, which was itself a 
reality. ' The soil of St. Peter ' was a recognized legal phrase. The 
name of Peter's ' Eye,' or ' Island,' which still lingers in the low land 
of Battersea, came by virtue of its connection with the Chapter of 
Westminster. Any one who infringed the charter of the abbey 
would, it was declared, be specially condemned by St. Peter when he 
sits on his throne judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Of the abbey 
of St. Peter at Westminster, as of the more celebrated basilica of St. 
Peter at Rome, it may be said that ' super hanc Petram ' the church 
of Westminster has been built. 

"Round the undoubted fact that this devotion to St. Peter was 
Edward's prevailing motive, gathered, during his own lifetime or 
immediately after, the various legends which give it form and shape 
in connection with the special peculiarities of the abbey. . . . 

" Such as these were the motives of Edward. Under their influ- 
ence was fixed what has ever since been the local centre of the Eng- 
lish monarchy and nation — of the palace and the legislature no less 
than of the abbey. 

" There had, no doubt, already existed, by the side of the Thames, 
an occasional resort of the English kings. But the Roman fortress 
in London, or the Saxon city of Winchester, had been hitherto their 
usual abode. Edward himself had formerly spent his time chiefly at 
his birthplace, Islip, or at the rude palace on the rising ground, still 
marked by various antique remains, above ' Old Windsor.' But now, 
for the sake of superintending the new church at Westminster, he 
lived more than any previous king in the regal residence (which he 
in great part rebuilt) close beside it. The abbey and the palace 
grew together, and into each other, in the closest union ; just as in 
Scotland, a few years later, Dumf ermline Palace sprang up by Dum- 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 89 

fermline Abbey, and, yet later again, Holyrood Abbey — first within 
the Castle of Edinburgh, and then on its present site — by Holyrood 
Palace. 

" ' The Chamber of St. Edward,' as it was called from him, or ' the 
Painted Chamber,' from its subsequent decorations, was the kernel of 
the palace of Westminster. This was the ' Old Palace,' as distin- 
guished from the ' New Palace ' of William Ruf us, of which the only 
vestige is the hall, looking out on what, from its novelty at that time, 
was called the ' New Palace Yard,' — as the open space, before what 
were the Confessor's buildings, is still known as ' Old Palace Yard.' . . . 

" The abbey had been fifteen years in building. The king bad 
spent upon it one tenth of the property of the kingdom. It was to be 
a marvel of its kind. As in its origin it bore the traces of the fan- 
tastic, childish character of the king and of the age, in its architec- 
ture it bore the stamp of the peculiar position which Edward occupied 
in English history between Saxon and Norman. By birth he was a 
Saxon, but in all else he was a foreigner. Accordingly, the church at 
Westminster was a wide sweeping innovation on all that had been seen 
before. ' Destroying the old building,' he says in his charter, ' I have 
built up a new one from the very foundation.' Its fame as 'a new 
style of composition ' lingered in the minds of men for generations. 
It was the first cruciform church in England, from which all the rest 
of like shape were copied, — an expression of the increasing hold 
which the idea of the Crucifixion, in the tenth century, had laid on the 
imagination of Europe. Its massive roof and pillars formed a con- 
trast with the rude wooden rafters and beams of the common Saxon 
churches. Its very size — occupying, as it did, almost the whole area 
of the present building — was in itself portentous. The deep founda- 
tions, of large square blocks of gray stone, were duly laid. The east 
end was rounded into an apse. A tower rose in the centre and two at 
the western point, with five large bells. The hard, strong stones were 
richly sculptured. The windows were filled with stained glass. The 
roof was covered with lead. The cloisters, chapter-house, refectory, 
dormitory, infirmary, with its spacious chapel, if not completed by 
Edward, were all begun, and finished in the next generation on the 
same plan. This structure, venerable as it would be if it had lasted 
to our time, has almost entirely vanished. Possibly one vast dark arch 
in the southern transept — certainly the substructures of the dormitory, 
with their huge pillars, ' grand and regal at the bases and capitals ' 
— the massive low-browed passage, leading from the great cloister to 
Little Dean's Yard — and some portions of the refectory and of the 
infirmary chapel, remain as specimens of the work which astonished 
the last age of the Anglo-Saxon and the first age of the Norman mon- 
archy," 



90 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

When I behold, with deep astonishment, 
To famous Westminster how there resorte 
Living in brasse or stoney monument, 
The princes and the worthies of all sorte ; 
Doe not I see reformde nobilitie, 
Without contempt, or pride, or ostentation, 
And looke upon offenselesse majesty, 
Naked of pomp or earthly domination ? 
And how a play-game of a painted stone 
Contents the quiet now and silent sprites, 
Whome all the world which late they stood upon 
Could not content nor quench their appetites. 

Life is a frost of cold felicitie, 

And death the thaw of all our vanitie. 

Chkistoleeo's Epigrams, by T. B. 1598. 

On one of those sober and rather melancholy clays, 
in the latter part of autumn, when the shadows of 
morning and evening almost mingle together, and 
throw a gloom over the decline of the year, I passed 
several hours in rambling about Westminster Abbey. 
There was something congenial to the season in the 
mournful magnificence of the old pile ; and as I passed 
its threshold, it seemed like stepping back into the 
regions of antiquity, and losing myself among the 
shades of former ages. 

I entered from the inner court of Westminster 
School, 1 through a long, low, vaulted passage, that had 
an almost subterranean look, being dimly lighted in 
one part by circular perforations in the massive walls. 
Through this dark avenue I had a distant view of the 
cloisters, with the figure of an old verger, in his black 
gown, moving along their shadowy vaidts, and seem- 
ing like a spectre from one of the neighboring tombs. 

The approach to the abbey through these gloomy 
monastic remains prepares the mind for its solemn 

1 Founded by Queen Elizabeth, with provisions for the educa- 
tion of forty boys, known as Queen's Scholars, for the universi- 
ties. Other boys may also attend it. It includes certain parts 
of the ancient abbey that have survived the changes of time. 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 91 

contemplation. The cloisters still retain something 
of the quiet and seclusion of former days. The gray 
walls are discolored by damps, and crumbling with 
age; a coat of hoary moss has gathered over the 
inscriptions of the mural monuments, and obscured 
the death's heads and other funereal emblems. The 
sharp touches of the chisel are gone from the rich 
tracery of the arches; the roses which adorned the 
key-stones have lost their leafy beauty; everything 
bears marks of the gradual dilapidations of time, 
which yet has something touching and pleasing in its 
very decay. 

The sun was pouring down a yellow autumnal rav^ 
into the square of the cloisters; beaming upon a 
scanty plot of grass in the centre, and lighting up an 
angle of the vaulted passage with a kind of dusty 
splendor. From between the arcades, the eye glanced 
up to a bit of blue sky or a passing cloud, and beheld 
the sun-gilt pinnacles of the abbey towering into the 
azure heaven. 

As I paced the cloisters, sometimes contemplating 
this mingled picture of glory and decay, and some- 
times endeavoring to decipher the inscriptions on the 
tombstones, which formed the pavement beneath my 
feet, my eye was attracted to three figures, rudely 
carved in relief, but nearly worn away by the footsteps 
of many generations. They were the effigies of three 
of the early abbots; the epitaphs were entirely ef- 
faced; the names alone remained, having no doubt 
been renewed in later times. (Vitalis. Abbas. 1082, 
and Gislebertus Crispinus. Abbas. 1114, and Lau- 
rentius. Abbas. 1176.) I remained some little while, 
musing over these casual relics of antiquity, thus 
left like wrecks upon this distant shore of time, telling 



92 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

no tale but that such beings had been and had per- 
ished; teaching no moral but the futility of that 
pride which hopes still to exact homage in its ashes, 
and to live in an inscription. A little longer, and 
even these faint records will be obliterated, and the 
monument will cease to be a memorial. Whilst I was 
yet looking down upon these gravestones, I was roused 
by the sound of the abbey clock, reverberating from 
buttress to buttress, and echoing among the cloisters. 
It is almost startling to hear this warning of departed 
time sounding among the tombs, and telling the lapse 
of the hour, which, like a billow, has rolled us onward 
towards the grave. 

I pursued my walk to an arched door opening to the 
interior of the abbey. On entering here, the magni- 
tude of the building breaks fully upon the mind, con- 
trasted with the vaults of the cloisters. The eyes 
gaze with wonder at clustered columns of gigantic 
dimensions, with arches springing from them to such 
an amazing height; and man wandering about their 
bases, shrunk into insignificance in comparison with 
his own handiwork. The spaciousness and gloom of 
this vast edifice produce a profound and mysterious 
awe. We step cautiously and softly about, as if fear- 
fid of disturbing the hallowed silence of the tomb; 
while every footfall whispers along the walls, and 
chatters among the sepulchres, making us more sensi- 
ble of the quiet we have interrupted. 

It seems as if the awful nature of the place presses 
down upon the soul, and hushes the beholder into 
noiseless reverence. We feel that we are surrounded 
by the congregated bones of the great men of past 
times, who have filled history with their deeds and 
the earth with their renown. And yet it almost pro- 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 93 

vokes a smile at the vanity of human ambition, to see 
how they are crowded together and jostled in the dust; 
what parsimony is observed in doling out a scanty 
nook, a gloomy corner, a little portion of earth, to 
those whom, when alive, kingdoms could not satisfy ; 
and how many shapes, and forms, and artifices, are 
devised to catch the casual notice of the passenger, 
and save from forgetfulness, for a few short years, 
a name which once aspired to occupy ages of the 
world's thought and admiration. 

I passed some time in Poets' Corner, which occu- 
pies an end of one of the transepts or cross aisles of 
the abbey. The monuments are generally simple ; for 
the lives of literary men afford no striking themes for 
the sculptor. Shakespeare and Addison have statues 
erected to their memories ; but the greater part have 
busts, medallions, and sometimes mere inscriptions. 
Notwithstanding the simplicity of these memorials, I 
have always observed that the visitors to the abbey 
remain longest about them. A kinder and fonder feel- 
ing takes place of that cold curiosity or vague admira- 
tion with which they gaze on the splendid monuments 
of the great and the heroic. They linger about these 
as about the tombs of friends and companions; for 
indeed there is something of companionship between 
the author and the reader. Other men are known to 
posterity only through the medium of history, which 
is continually growing faint and obscure; but the 
intercourse between the author and his fellow-men 
is ever new, active, and immediate. He has lived 
for them more than for himself; he has sacrificed 
surrounding enjoyments, and shut himself up from 
the delights of social life, that he might the more 
intimately commune with distant minds and distant 



94 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

ages. Well may the world cherish his renown; for 
it has been purchased, not by deeds of violence and 
blood, but by the diligent dispensation of pleasure. 
Well may posterity be grateful to his memory; for 
he has left it an inheritance, not of empty names 
and sounding actions, but whole treasures of wis- 
dom, bright gems of thought, and golden veins of 
language. 

From Poets' Corner I continued my stroll towards 
that part of the abbey which contains the sepulchres 
of the kings. I wandered among what once were 
chapels, but which are now occupied by the tombs and 
monuments of the great. At every turn, I met with 
some illustrious name, or the cognizance of some pow- 
erful house renowned in history. As the eye darts 
into these dusky chambers of death, it catches glimpses 
of quaint effigies: some kneeling in niches, as if in 
devotion; others stretched upon the tombs, with 
hands piously pressed together ; warriors in armor, as 
if reposing after battle; prelates, with crosiers and 
mitres ; and nobles in robes and coronets, lying as it 
were in state. In glancing over this scene, so 
strangely populous, yet where every form is so still 
and silent, it seems almost as if we were treading a 
mansion of that fabled city 1 where every being had 
been suddenly transmuted into stone. 

I paused to contemplate a tomb on which lay the 
effigy of a knight in complete armor. A large buck- 
ler was on one arm ; the hands were pressed together 
.in supplication upon the breast; the face was almost 
covered by the morion ; the legs were crossed in token 
of the warrior's having been engaged in the holy war. 
It was the tomb of a crusader ; of one of those mili- 

1 See Arabia?i Nights' Entertainments, Sixty-fifth Night. 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 95 

tary enthusiasts who so strangely mingled religion and 
romance, and whose exploits form the connecting link 
between fact and fiction, between the history and the 
fairy tale. There is something extremely picturesque 
in the tombs of these adventurers, decorated as they 
are with rude armorial bearings and Gothic sculpture. 
They comport with the antiquated chapels in which 
they are generally found; and in considering them, 
the imagination is apt to kindle with the legendary 
associations, the romantic fiction, the chivalrous pomp 
and pageantry, which poetry has spread over the wars 
for the sepulchre of Christ. They are the relics of 
times utterly gone by ; of beings passed from recollec- 
tion ; of customs and manners with which ours have 
no affinity. They are like objects from some strange 
and distant land, of which we have no certain know- 
ledge, and about which all our conceptions are vague 
and visionary. There is something extremely solemn 
and awful in those effigies on Gothic tombs, extended 
as if in the sleep of death, or in the supplication of 
the dying hour. They have an effect infinitely more 
impressive on my feelings than the fanciful attitudes, 
the over-wrought conceits, and allegorical groups, 
which abound on modern monuments. I have been 
struck, also, with the superiority of many of the old 
sepulchral inscriptions. There was a noble way, iu 
former times, of saying things simply, and yet saying 
them proudly; and I do not know an epitaph that 
breathes a loftier consciousness of family worth and 
honorable lineage, than one which affirms, of a noble 
house, that " all the brothers were brave, and all the 
sisters virtuous." 

In the opposite transept to Poets' Corner stands a 
monument which is among the most renowned achieve- 



96 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

ments of modern art; but which to me appears hor- 
rible rather than sublime. It is the tomb of Mrs. 
Nightingale, 1 by Roubillac. The bottom of the mon- 
ument is represented as throwing open its marble 
doors, and a sheeted skeleton is starting forth. The 
shroud is falling from his fleshless frame as he 
launches his dart at his victim. She is sinking into 
her affrighted husband's arms, who strives, with vain 
and frantic effort, to avert the blow. The whole is 
executed with terrible truth and spirit; we almost 
fancy we hear the gibbering yell of triumph bursting 
from the distended jaws of the spectre. But why 
should we thus seek to clothe death with unnecessary 
terrors, and to spread horrors round the tomb of 
those we love? The grave should be surrounded by 
everything that might inspire tenderness and venera- 
tion for the dead; or that might win the living to 
virtue. It is the place, not of disgust and dismay, 
but of sorrow and meditation. 

While wandering about these gloomy vaults and 
silent aisles, studying the records of the dead, the 
sound of busy existence from without occasionally 
reaches the ear : the rumbling of the passing equipage ; 
the murmur of the multitude; or perhaps the light 
laugh of pleasure. The contrast is striking with the 
deathlike repose around; and it has a strange effect 
upon the feelings, thus to hear the surges of active life 
hurrying along and beating against the very walls of 
the sepulchre. 

I continued in this way to move from tomb to tomb, 
and from chapel to chapel. The day was gradually 

i Lady Elizabeth Nightingale, who died in 1731. The monu- 
ment, which was erected in 1758, is by Louis Francois Roubillac 
(or Roubiliac), a French sculptor (1695-1762), 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 97 

wearing away ; the distant tread of loiterers about the 
abbey grew less and less frequent ; the sweet- tongued 
bell was summoning to evening prayers ; and I saw at 
a distance the choristers, in their white surplices, 
crossing the aisle and entering the choir. I stood 
before the entrance to Henry the Seventh's chapel. 
A flight of steps lead up to it, through a deep and 
gloomy, but magnificent arch. Great gates of brass, 
richly and delicately wrought, turn heavily upon their 
hinges, as if proudly reluctant to admit the feet of 
common mortals into this most gorgeous of sepul- 
chres. 

On entering, the eye is astonished by the pomp of 
architecture and the elaborate beauty of sculptured 
detail. The very walls are wrought into universal 
ornament, encrusted with tracery, and scooped into 
niches, crowded with the statues of saints and mar- 
tyrs. Stone seems, by the cunning labor of the chisel, 
to have been robbed of its weight and density, sus- 
pended aloft, as if by magic, and the fretted roof 
achieved with the wonderful minuteness and airy se- 
curity of a cobweb. 

Along the sides of the chapel are the lofty stalls of 
the Knights of the Bath, 1 richly carved of oak, though 

1 The second order of knighthood in England, that of the 
Garter ranking first. It was the practice of the early sovereigns 
before their coronation to create a number of knights. The cere- 
mony of bathing used to be practiced at the inauguration of the 
knight as an emblem or token of the purity required of him 
under the laws of chivalry. The name of this order appears as 
early as the time of Henry IV. Only persons of high rank or 
distinguished service are admitted. There are three grades or 
classes within the order, known as knights grand cross (K. G. C), 
knights commanders (K. C. B.), and companions (C. B.), the 
first two only being entitled to the appellation of Sir. 



98 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

with the grotesque decorations of Gothic architecture. 
On the pinnacles of the stalls are affixed the helmets 
and crests of the knights, with their scarfs and swords ; 
and above them are suspended their banners, embla- 
zoned with armorial bearings, and contrasting the 
splendor of gold and purple and crimson with the 
cold gray fretwork of the roof. In the midst of this 
grand mausoleum stands the sepulchre of its founder, 
— his effigy, with that of his queen, extended on a 
sumptuous tomb, and the whole surrounded by a 
superbly -wrought brazen railing. 

There is a sad dreariness in this magnificence ; this 
strange mixture of tombs and trophies; these em- 
blems of living and aspiring ambition, close beside 
mementos which show the dust and oblivion in which 
all must sooner or later terminate. Nothing im- 
presses the mind with a deeper feeling of loneliness, 
than to tread the silent and deserted scene of former 
throng and pageant. On looking round on the vacant 
stalls of the knights and their esquires, and on the 
rows of dusty but gorgeous banners that were once 
borne before them, my imagination conjured up the 
scene when this hall was bright with the valor and 
beauty of the land; glittering with the splendor of 
jewelled rank and military array ; alive with the tread 
of many feet, and the hum of an admiring multitude. 
All had passed away ; the silence of death had settled 
again upon the place ; interrupted only by the casual 
chirping of birds, which had found their way into 
the chapel, and built their nests among its friezes 
and pendants, — sure signs of solitariness and deser- 
tion. 

When I read the names inscribed on the banners, 
they were those of men scattered far and wide about 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 99 

the world; some tossing upon distant seas; some 
under arms in distant lands; some mingling in the 
busy intrigues of courts and cabinets; all seeking to 
deserve one more distinction in this mansion of shad- 
owy honors, — the melancholy reward of a monu- 
ment. 

Two small aisles on each side of this chapel present 
a touching instance of the equality of the grave, which 
brings down the oppressor to a level with the op- 
pressed, and mingles the dust of the bitterest enemies 
together. In one is the sepulchre of the haughty 
Elizabeth; in the other is that of her victim, the 
lovely and unfortunate Mary. Not an hour in the 
day, but some ejaculation of pity is uttered over the 
fate of the latter, mingled with indignation at her 
oppressor. The walls of Elizabeth's sepulchre con- 
tinually echo with the sighs of sympathy heaved at 
the grave of her rival. 

A peculiar melancholy reigns over the aisle where 
Mary lies buried. The light struggles dimly through 
windows darkened by dust. The greater part of the 
place is in deep shadow, and the walls are stained and 
tinted by time and weather. A marble figure of 
Mary is stretched upon the tomb, round which is an 
iron railing, much corroded, bearing her national em- 
blem, the thistle. I was weary with wandering, and 
sat down to rest myself by the monument, revolving 
in my mind the checkered and disastrous story of poor 
Mary. 

The sound of casual footsteps had ceased from the 
abbey. I could only hear, now and then, the distant 
voice of the priest repeating the evening service, and 
the faint responses of the choir; these paused for a 
time, and all was hushed. The stillness, the desertion 



100 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

and obscurity that were gradually prevailing around, 
gave a deeper and more solemn interest to the place: 

For in the silent grave no conversation, 

No joyful tread of friends, no voice of lovers, 

No careful father's counsel — nothing 's heard, 

For nothing is, but all oblivion, 

Dust, and an endless darkness. 

Suddenly the notes of the deep-laboring organ 
burst upon the ear, falling with doubled and redou- 
bled intensity, and rolling, as it were, huge billows 
of sound. How well do their volume and grandeur 
accord with this mighty building ! With what pomp 
do they swell through its vast vaults, and breathe 
their awful harmony through these caves of death, and 
make the silent sepulchre vocal ! — And now they 
rise in triumphant acclamation, heaving higher and 
higher their accordant notes, and piling sound on 
sound. — And now they pause, and the soft voices of 
the choir break out into sweet gushes of melody ; they 
soar aloft, and warble along the roof, and seem to 
play about these lofty vaults like the pure airs of 
heaven. Again the pealing organ heaves its thrilling 
thunders, compressing air into music, and rolling it 
forth upon the soul. What long-drawn cadences ! 
What solemn sweeping concords ! It grows more and 
more dense and powerful — it fills the vast pile, and 
seems to jar the very walls — the ear is stunned — the 
senses are overwhelmed. And now it is winding up 
in full jubilee — it is rising from the earth to heaven 
— the very soul seems rapt away, and floated upwards 
on this swelling tide of harmony ! 

I sat for some time lost in that kind of reverie 
which a strain of music is apt sometimes to inspire; 
the shadows of evening were gradually thickening 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 101 

around me ; the monuments began to cast deeper and 
deeper gloom ; and the distant clock again gave token 
of the slowly waning day. 

I rose, and prepared to leave the abbey. As I de- 
scended the flight of steps which lead into the body of 
the building, my eye was caught by the shrine of Ed- 
ward the Confessor, and I ascended the small staircase 
that conducts to it, to take from thence a general sur- 
vey of this wilderness of tombs. The shrine is ele- 
vated upon a kind of platform, and close around it are 
the sepulchres of various kings and queens. From 
this eminence the eye looks down between pillars and 
funeral trophies to the chapels and chambers below, 
crowded with tombs; where warriors, prelates, cour- 
tiers, and statesmen, lie mouldering in their u beds 
of darkness." Close by me stood the great chair of 
coronation, 1 rudely carved of oak, in the barbarous 
taste of a remote and Gothic age. The scene seemed 
almost as if contrived, with theatrical artifice, to pro- 
duce an effect upon the beholder. Here was a type 
of the beginning and the end of human pomp and 
power ; here it was literally but a step from the throne 
to the sepulchre. Would not one think that these in- 
congruous mementos had been gathered together as a 
lesson to living greatness? — to show it, even in the 
moment of its proudest exaltation, the neglect and 
dishonor to which it must soon arrive; how soon that 
crown which encircles its brow must pass away, and 
it must lie down in the dust and disgraces of the tomb, 
and be trampled upon by the feet of the meanest of 

1 A chair of oak made by Edward L, in which all the English 
sovereigns since his time have sat to be crowned. It is said to 
have been carried from the abbey but once, — when Cromwell 
was made Lord Protector in a formal way in Westminster Hall. 



102 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

the multitude. For, strange to tell, even the grave is 
here no longer a sanctuary. There is a shocking 
levity in some natures, which leads them to sport with 
awful and hallowed things; and there are base minds 
which delight to revenge on the illustrious dead the 
abject homage and grovelling servility which they pay 
to the living. The coffin of Edward the Confessor 
has been broken open, and his remains despoiled of 
their funereal ornaments ; the sceptre has been stolen 
from the hand of the imperious Elizabeth, and the 
effigy of Henry the Fifth lies headless. Not a royal 
monument but bears some proof how false and fugi- 
tive is the homage of mankind. Some are plundered, 
some mutilated; some covered with ribaldry and 
insult, — all more or less outraged and dishonored ! 

The last beams of day were now faintly streaming 
through the painted windows in the high vaults above 
me; the lower parts of the abbey were already 
wrapped in the obscurity of twilight. The chapels and 
aisles grew darker and darker. The effigies of the 
kings faded into shadows ; the marble figures of the 
monuments assumed strange shapes in the uncertain 
light; the evening breeze crept through the aisles like 
the cold breath of the grave; and even the distant 
footfall of a verger, traversing the Poets' Corner, had 
something strange and dreary in its sound. I slowly 
retraced my morning's walk, and as I passed out at 
the portal of the cloisters, the door, closing with a jar- 
ring noise behind me, filled the whole building with 
echoes. 

I endeavored to form some arrangement in my mind 
of the objects I had been contemplating, but found 
they were already falling into indistinctness and 
confusion. Names, inscriptions, trophies, had all 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 103 

become confounded in my recollection, though I had 
scarcely taken my foot from off the threshold. What, 
thought I, is this vast assemblage of sepulchres but 
a treasury of humiliation; a huge pile of reiterated 
homilies on the emptiness of renown and the cer- 
tainty of oblivion! It is, indeed, the empire of 
Death; his great shadowy palace, where he sits in 
state, mocking at the relics of human glory, and 
spreading dust and forgetfulness on the monuments of 
princes. How idle a boast, after all, is the immor- 
tality of a name ! Time is ever silently turning over 
his pages ; we are too much engrossed by the story of 
the present, to think of the characters and anecdotes 
that gave interest to the past ; and each age is a 
volume thrown aside to be speedily forgotten. The 
idol of to-day pushes the hero of yesterday out of 
our recollection; and will, in turn, be supplanted by 
his successor of to-morrow. "Our fathers," says Sir 
Thomas Browne, 1 "find their graves in our short mem- 
ories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our 
survivors." History fades into fable; fact becomes 
clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription 
moulders from the tablet; the statue falls from the 
pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they 
but heaps of sand; and their epitaphs but characters 
written in the dust ? What is the security of a tomb, 
or the perpetuity of an embalmment? The remains 
of Alexander the Great have been scattered to the 
wind, and his empty sarcophagus is now the mere 
curiosity of a museum. "The Egyptian mummies, 
which Cambyses 2 or time hath spared, avarice now 

1 A merchant's son, born in London in 1605, and knighted by- 
Charles II. in 1671. His Religio Medici (The Religion of a Phy- 
sician) is his ablest and best known work. 

2 This Persian king conquered Egypt 525 B. c. 



104 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

consumeth; Mizraim 1 cures wounds, and Pharaoh is 
sold for balsams." 2 

What, then, is to insure this pile, which now towers 
above me, from sharing the fate of mightier mauso- 
leums ? The time must come when its gilded vaults, 
which now spring so loftily, shall lie in rubbish be- 
neath the feet ; when, instead of the sound of melody 
and praise, the wind shall whistle through the broken 
arches, and the owl hoot from the shattered tower; 
when the garish sunbeam shall break into these 
gloomy mansions of death, and the ivy twine round 
the fallen column, and the fox-glove hang its blos- 
soms about the nameless urn, as if in mockery of the 
dead. Thus man passes away; his name perishes 
from record and recollection; his history is as a tale 
that is told, and his very monument becomes a ruin. 

1 An ancient name of Egypt, but used here for the earliest 
rulers taken as a body. In like manner Pharaoh, which is used 
as the title of a sovereign very much like the name of Czar or 
Sultan, is put collectively for such rulers as are not included 
under Mizraim. 

2 Quoted from Sir Thomas Browne. 



VENVOY. 105 



L'ENVOY. 

Go, little booke, God send thee good passage, 
And specially let this be thy prayere, 
Unto them all that thee will read or hear, 
Where thou art wrong, after their help to call, 
Thee to correct in any part or all. 

Chaucer's Belle Dame sans Mercie. 

In concluding a second volume of the Sketch Book, 
the author cannot but express his deep sense of the in- 
dulgence with which his first has beeti received, and 
of the liberal disposition that has been evinced to treat 
him with kindness as a stranger. Even the critics, 
whatever may be said of them by others, he has found 
to be a singularly gentle and good-natured race; it 
is true that each has in turn objected to some one or 
two articles, and that these individual exceptions, 
taken in the aggregate, would amount almost to a 
total condemnation of his work; but then he has been 
consoled by observing, that what one has particularly 
censured, another has as particularly praised; and 
thus, the encomiums being set off against the objec- 
tions, he finds his work, upon the whole, commended 
far beyond its deserts. 

He is aware that he runs a risk of forfeiting much 
of this kind favor by not following the counsel that 
has been liberally bestowed upon him; for where 
abundance of valuable advice is given gratis, it may 
seem a man's own fault if he should go astray. He 
only can say, in his vindication, that he faithfully 
determined, for a time, to govern himself in his sec- 
ond volume by the opinions passed upon his first ; but 
he was soon brought to a stand by the contrariety of 
excellent counsel. One kindly advised him to avoid 
the ludicrous ; another, to shun the pathetic ; a third 



106 WASHINGTON IRVING. 

assured him that he was tolerable at description, but 
cautioned him to leave narrative alone ; while a fourth 
declared that he had a very pretty knack at turning 
a story, and was really entertaining when in a pensive 
mood, but was grievously mistaken if he imagined 
himself to possess a spirit of humor. 

Thus perplexed by the advice of his friends, who 
each in turn closed some particular path, but left him 
all the world beside to range in, he found that to fol- 
low all their counsels would, in fact, be to stand still. 
He remained for a time sadly embarrassed ; when, all 
at once, the thought struck him to ramble on as he 
had begun; that his work being miscellaneous, and 
written for different humors, it could not be expected 
that any one would be pleased with the whole; but 
that if it should contain something to suit each reader, 
his end would be completely answered. Few guests 
sit down to a varied table with an equal appetite for 
every dish. One has an elegant horror of a roasted 
pig; another holds a curry or a devil in utter abom- 
ination ; a third cannot tolerate the ancient flavor of 
venison and wild-fowl ; and a fourth, of truly mascu- 
line stomach, looks with sovereign contempt on those 
knick-knacks here and there dished up for the ladies. 
Thus each article is condemned in its turn ; and yet, 
amidst this variety of appetites, seldom does a dish 
go away from the table without being tasted and rel- 
ished by some one or other of the guests. 

With these considerations he ventures to serve up 
this second volume in the same heterogeneous way 
with his first; simply requesting the reader, if he 
should find here and there something to please him, to 
rest assured that it was written expressly for intelli- 
gent readers like himself; but entreating him, should 



VENVOY. 107 

he find anything to dislike, to tolerate it, as one of 
those articles which the author has been obliged to 
write for readers of a less refined taste. 

To be serious. — The author is conscious of the 
numerous faults and imperfections of his work; and 
well aware how little he is disciplined and accom- 
plished in the arts of authorship. His deficiencies are 
also increased by a diffidence arising from his peculiar 
situation. He finds himself writing in a strange 
land, and appearing before a public which he has 
been accustomed, from childhood, to regard with the 
highest feelings of awe and reverence. He is full of 
solicitude to deserve their approbation, yet finds that 
very solicitude continually embarrassing his powers, 
and depriving him of that ease and confidence which 
are necessary to successful exertion. Still, the kind- 
ness with which he is treated encourages him to go 
on, hoping that in time he may acquire a steadier 
footing; and thus he proceeds, half venturing, half 
shrinking, surprised at his own good fortune, and 
wondering at his own temerity. 



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